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…
- Be visible on camera at all times during gameplay.
- Use an Internet connection with at least 2.5 megabits/second bandwidth, both upstream and downstream.
Furthermore, we very strongly recommend that players…
- Use a full-featured desktop or laptop computer (as opposed to a phone, tablet, or Chromebook) for Zoom. It is fine to use a phone to buzz in (but no other use of the phone is acceptable).
- Use the installed Zoom client application (as opposed to the web app).
- Read the player portion of the Online Tournament Guide, and potentially the entire guide.
In addition to the requirements of the Online Tournament Guide, for this tournament:
- All players must comply with the Integrity Policy for Online National Championships, including the requirement that every player’s face and both hands be visible at essentially all times when they are active in gameplay.
-
Unless part of a team playing in a single, otherwise isolated location, all players are expected to use headphones, earbuds, or a headset—not speakers. Failure to use headphones (etc.) is not a violation of the rules per se, but if a player is not using headphones, earbuds, or a headset and experiences audio problems, no time will be spent troubleshooting their issues, and they will be swiftly removed from the game if necessary to maintain the quality of the game for other participants.
We furthermore very strongly recommend that players use a headset or external microphone rather than their device’s built-in microphone.
- If multiple players are playing from a single location, each player must have a nametag that is clearly visible to the camera. The nametag must consist of a standard, white, letter- or A4-sized piece of paper folded lengthwise with full-height letters in dark ink.
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.
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.
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!
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).