New Middle School Program
NAQT is pleased to announce that, starting with the 2010-2011 competition year, it will add a middle school quiz bowl program to complement its high school, community college, and college offerings.
The program will be open to all middle school-age students (grades 6-8), regardless of the type of school that they attend. Home schooled students will also be allowed to participate.
The program will be structured very similarly to the one operated by NAQT for high schools: Schools will form squads of interested students that organize practices and then partition themselves into teams to attend tournaments.
The top finishers from those events will be invited to attend the inaugual Middle School National Championship Tournament (MSNCT), which will be held May 6-8, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago. There they will compete against the best teams from around the country for the honor of being crowned national champion.
For this first year, NAQT will producing only a single middle school invitational series, but intends to increase the number of such sets in future years. Since this may limit the number of opportunities for schools to qualify for the national championship, NAQT will adopt a lenient wildcard policy for this first year.
Schools interested in hosting qualifying events should e-mail NAQT at hosting@naqt.com to express their interest and get answers to any questions that they have. Schools interested in attending events should check NAQT's tournament schedule for a list of available events.
No explicit registration fee or affiliation with NAQT is necessary for a school to participate in the program; schools may form teams and begin competing at any time. It is necessary to register for specific tournaments, however.
The middle school program will use the same rules as NAQT's other levels of play. The eligibility rules will also be similar. Packets will consist of 24 tossups and 24 bonuses, just like at the high school level. Middle school questions will be approximately as long as NAQT's Introductory Invitational Series ("A-level") for high schoolers, but of lower difficulty. NAQT has a sample middle school packet available.
If you have any questions about NAQT's middle school quiz bowl program, please don't hesitate to e-mail NAQT at naqt@naqt.com or to call us toll-free at 888.411.6278 ("NAQT").