Resources for Hosting Tournaments
First and foremost, please remember that NAQT is always willing to provide advice on all aspects of running a tournament. Write to us at hosting@naqt.com and we’ll be glad to help.
NAQT has collected a series of online resources to help schools host tournaments easily and efficiently:
Overall Process
SoCalQuizBowl.org’s “How to Run a Quizbowl Tournament: A Guide”: A high school-focused guide.
Paul Lujan and Juliana Froggatt’s TD Guide: A comprehensive guide to hosting tournaments by two Berkeley alumni. Focused on college tournaments.
Inviting Teams
NAQT is happy to share its contact lists for tournaments on our questions. Write to hosting@naqt.com if you want that!
Most open tournaments (at all levels) are announced on the Quizbowl Resource Center forums.
Making a Schedule
- Paul Lujan and Juliana Froggatt’s Scheduling Guide: A thorough guide to various forms of round robin tournaments by two Berkeley alumni.
- NAQT’s Approved SCT Formats: We have prepared schedule templates that can be used or adapted for any tournament up to 24 teams, although they are designed for collegiate Sectional Championship Tournaments.
- Teamopolis: A free generator of round-robin schedules.
- Jonah Greenthal’s qbschedule: Not quite as easy to use, but provides a wide variety of round robin-based schedules for tournaments up to 36 teams.
- NAQT’s blank playoff brackets for single-elimination playoff among 16 teams or 32 teams.
- NAQT’s Policies on tiebreakers, elimination, and unusual cases. Most tournaments are not required, but are encouraged, to use these. The tiebreakers page includes brackets for many tiebreaker procedures.
Information to Provide in Teams’ Folders
Hosts may want to provide teams and/or staff with copies of some or all of the following documents:
- The NAQT Rules, and/or a brief summary of the rules
- The NAQT Correctness Guidelines
- The NAQT scoresheet, with a filled-out sample available for staff training
- An electronic version (Microsoft Excel/XLSX) of the scoresheet
- A form for evaluating moderators
Staff Training
Keeping Statistics
- NAQT’s guide to reporting results
- SQBS: NAQT’s preferred program for tracking and submitting results.
- Using SQBS: A guide to making the most efficient use of SQBS at tournaments whose results will be reported to NAQT.
- Results Submission Template: An Excel spreadsheet with blanks for reporting match scores to NAQT.