2021 Community College Championship Tournament Logistics Information

The 2021 Community College Championship Tournament (CCCT) was held online on February 27, 2021.

Contents

    Date

    February 27, 2021 (Saturday).

    Medium

    Online, via Zoom and in accordance with the rest of NAQT’s Online Tournament Guide.

    To promote confidence in the integrity of online competition, NAQT has established an Integrity Policy for Online National Championships that establishes requirements for players while they are active. All players and coaches should read the policy, and all players should be prepared to comply with it during gameplay.

    Technical Requirements

    Players should read and must follow the rules and procedures in NAQT’s Online Tournament Guide. This includes, but is not limited to, the requirements that players must…

    Furthermore, we very strongly recommend that players…

    In addition to the requirements of the Online Tournament Guide, for this tournament:

    Schedule

    This schedule is final.

    All times are listed in Central time.

    Time Event
    8:30 – 8:40 a.m. Team meeting
    8:45 – 9:25 a.m. Round 1
    9:25 – 10:05 a.m. Round 2
    10:05 – 10:45 a.m. Round 3
    10:45 – 11:25 a.m. Round 4
    11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Break (Lunch)
    12:15 – 12:55 p.m. Round 5
    12:55 – 1:35 p.m. Round 6
    1:35 – 2:15 p.m. Round 7
    2:15 – 2:30 p.m. Break
    2:30 – 3:10 p.m. Round 8
    3:10 – 3:50 p.m. Round 9
    3:50 – 4:30 p.m. Round 10
    4:30 – 4:35 p.m. Break
    4:35 – 5:15 p.m. Round 11 (final) if necessary
    5:15 – 5:25 p.m. Awards and Closing

    Frequently Asked Questions

    NAQT has prepared answers to frequently asked questions about its national championships.

    Rules and Eligibility

    Gameplay will follow the Official NAQT Rules as modified for online play. Player eligibility is governed by the Community College Eligibility Rules.

    Qualification

    Schools qualified to send teams to the CCCT through their performances at the Community College Sectional Championship Tournament held on January 23.

    Field

    These teams attended the tournament.

    Format

    Teams will be initially divided into two pools of eight teams, each of which will play a round robin (Rounds 1–7).

    After Round 7, playoff pools will be formed consisting of the top three teams from each preliminary pool, the next three teams from each preliminary pool, and the bottom two teams from each preliminary pool, as ranked by win-loss record followed by points per tossup heard. (For the sake of expedience in an online tournament, this is a departure from NAQT’s usual practice of playing off all ties that affect pool advancement—instead, such ties will be broken based on statistics.) In the playoffs (Rounds 8–10), teams in the first two pools will play only the teams that are in their own playoff pool and that played in the other preliminary pool.

    After Round 10, teams in the first two playoff pools will be ranked by playoff pool followed by win-loss record in games among teams in the same playoff pool. That is, each team in the first and second playoff pools will “carry over” (only) two games from the preliminary rounds. Teams in the third playoff pool will be ranked within that pool based on playoff games only.

    If there is a tie for the best record in the first playoff pool, the teams involved will play a final (which would involve multiple stages if there are more than two teams involved in the tie). Otherwise, the top team is the champion of the tournament. Other ties in the top playoff pool may be played off at the discretion of the tournament director.

    Registration and Fees

    Registration has closed.

    The registration fee is $360 per team.

    The registration fee only covers participation in the tournament. It does not cover equipment or other expenses.

    Cancellation

    Invitation acceptances will be considered final on February 16. If a team cancels on or after February 17, it will be liable for 50% of the base registration fee as a cancellation penalty. Teams who cancel on or after February 25, including tournament no-shows, will be liable for the entire base registration fee. Failure to submit participation releases on time may be treated as a cancellation, including incurring a cancellation fee, at NAQT’s discretion.

    Payment

    Payment is due by the beginning of the tournament. NAQT strongly prefers payment prior to tournament check-in but also accepts payments at check-in. Schools that will be unable to pay by this time (typically for reasons related to school bureaucracies) should discuss their situation with NAQT well in advance.

    NAQT may specify earlier payment deadlines for specific teams, especially those for which the school is not paying.

    NAQT will send invoices well in advance of the tournament. If you would like to pay or request an invoice earlier, once you have entered all the information that can affect costs (but not necessarily entered your roster), at the bottom of your registration page, click “View Cost.” Verify that the listed information is correct, and if so, follow the instructions to request an invoice so that we have the proper billing information. You will also be offered the opportunity to pay by credit card.

    Checks, payable to “NAQT,” should be sent to

    National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
    11521 W 69th St
    Shawnee, KS 66203–3749

    Please send questions about billing to billing@naqt.com.

    Participation Releases

    Every player will be required to sign a participation release covering expectations, media coverage, etc. All releases must be submitted to release@naqt.com by Friday, February 19, 2021. Release forms will be made available via the registration process.

    Participants who are not at least 18 years old as of the start of the tournament must notify NAQT (including their date of birth) so that arrangements can be made to have parents/legal guardians sign the release.

    If you’re not sure of your roster in advance, enter everyone who might play and submit releases for all of them. It’s fine to drop players, but if a player’s release is not submitted on time, they may not play. For the purposes of participation releases, it doesn’t matter which team from your school they’re on (if you enter multiple teams).

    Please be sure that the signer initials the first page in the lower-right corner!

    An example participation release is available.

    Questions

    This tournament will use Invitational Series #201. This question set has not been (and will not be) made available for any other community college tournaments, but programs with dual-enrolled players must be certain their players do not have (or cancel) any other plans to play those questions. (There are also other eligibility considerations that apply to dual-enrolled players.)

    Awards

    The top four teams will each receive one plaque, one medal for each player, and one medal for the coach. These will be sent to one address specified by the team.

    The top eight scorers (by points per tossup heard in the preliminary rounds) will each receive a medal. For players on teams that finished in the top four, the medals will be sent with the team awards. For players not on such teams, the medals will be shipped to the players.

    Qualifying for the ICT

    The top three teams from this tournament will be guaranteed spots in the overall Division II collegiate championship at the 2021 Intercollegiate Championship Tournament, powered by LetterOne, on April 10, 2021.

    Advocate Program

    Because NAQT believes that quiz bowl is an activity for everybody, and in which all participants should feel welcome and respected, we have established the Advocate Program to make sure select tournament staff are available to hear reports about problematic behavior and comments by anyone at the tournament.

    Please send concerns to advocate@naqt.com, ideally as soon as practical after any incident.

    There are other suitable channels for reporting concerns, such as the Misconduct Reporting Form, but the Advocate Program is intended to allow for immediate reporting of sensitive complaints so they can be handled during the tournament.

    Reports are confidential to the extent permitted by law and NAQT’s agreements to share critical information with other quiz bowl organizations.

    Practice Material

    Participants may be interested in practicing on questions from previous years to prepare for the event. All of NAQT’s past regular-season sets are available, as are the sets from previous championships.

    Participants may also want to study frequency lists, Power Up study guides, and/or Thumbs Up! question anthologies. These are also available on our practice materials page.

    Finally, participants may want to look at the information contained in NAQT’s free You Gotta Know articles before the tournament. These detail the most frequently asked-about question topics in a wide variety of areas.

    Spectators

    In general, spectators are welcome to attend any and all parts of the tournament. However, anyone planning to play (or considering playing) on the same question set, and their friends, relatives, coaches, and chaperones may not watch games or otherwise communicate with anyone about the questions, nor may they be in the same room as anyone participating in games, nor may they be in any location where they could hear any sound from games.

    Prospective spectators should read NAQT’s advice for spectators of online tournaments. To ensure the quality of the tournament experience for players, spectators may be removed from games if they are disruptive or if the moderator believes that their presence is degrading audio or video quality.

    No registration or tickets are required for spectators.

    Social Media

    The official hashtag for the tournament is ccct; please use this tag for all posts about the tournament.

    Remember that question content for the championship cannot be posted online (or shared through other channels)! This means that players, coaches, spectators, and moderators should not discuss clues, answers, or even overall themes (e.g., “Lots of opera”) with people on other teams (even those from the same school).

    NAQT Nationals app logo

    Companion Mobile App

    NAQT has created a companion mobile app for attendees. The app includes the tournament schedule (with the ability to set reminders for various events, on iOS), links to results, connections to social media, and other important documents related to the tournament.

    Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play

    Further Questions

    To ask specific questions about the CCCT, write to ccct@naqt.com.

    We look forward to answering any and all questions, no matter how expansive or trivial, in the hopes of eliminating any possible confusion or mistakes in participants’ plans. If something’s not clear, let us know!

    2021 Community College Championship Tournament

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