I hadn't planned to write this this year unless I was doing the last bit of the book. I had put the task off because it's the contingency plan you don't want to face, and then it's too late.
When I did the post-mortem description after you lose your match way back around 2020, I wrote that it was important to collect everything you've done and put it in a safe, accessible place. That was to ensure that you had everything you need to restart as soon as possible, and always keep you in the mindset of continuing the team. What I didn't include in that is the note you need to write to your successor as coach, a letter of continuity. Because there's no guarantee that any break in the continuity of the team will involve you on the other side.
I had put this off, despite knowing it needed to be done for the book, because of being sick before. I had no interest in revisiting that particular part of being sick, the planning for without yourself. And I was not having it earlier this school year when my boss's boss's boss retired. But I needed to put it together tonight.
When writing your letter of continuity, you need to let them know what they'll need to do to pick up where you left off, based on the assumption that it's not future you that is the recipient. It's something to include all the passwords and secret locations where the team has information, and all the contacts you'll need to get the information back.
Hi there,
I'm the last person who tried this. With the help of Mrs. Parker and the support of the school administration, we kept this team running for three years. I'll admit we never got it as big as we wanted it to be, and if we have to point to a reason that we're not continuing it, it's the lack of critical mass of people we collected. But the people we did introduce to quiz bowl enjoyed it, and it was a great help to have a group of like minded people with natural curiosity in one activity.
If you're planning to restart this, please take note of the following. I have assembled all of the lessons and study guides in a google drive, which Mrs. Parker and I have access and the ability to grant viewing and editing permissions. Inside there you will also find a document showing what lessons and study guides we gave out on which weeks, and the listings of which practice rounds we ran in practice. The contents of those two documents should allow you to plan out what you want to do in practice for the first few weeks. This is a plan you can use to get your team going, and keep them going for at least a year.
If you're beginning the year, your first step will be to recruit the school widely, your second step is to set out a schedule of practices. You need practice to show the players things that they will be repeated throughout competitions.
There are simulations of televised competition rounds in the drive. There are also archives of questions online at quizbowlpackets.com. Start with the novice rounds you find there in practice, and use the televised competition rounds to show the team what the show looks like.
Once you have enough players to form a team and practices are occurring regularly, you should look into competitions. We got on the local KD Quiz program, and they'd want you back. As soon as you feel confident in your team, apply to get on the show on their website. Advise the team to start watching this show so they can see what it's like in advance, and so they can see that it's possible for them to do well on the show.
When you start using the rounds from the archive, start considering taking them to tournaments at colleges. If you search for quiz bowl competition calendars, you'll find lots of events throughout the year, many local to you and even some online competitions. I urge you to have them consider competitions, because they are experience.
You also should have the viewing rights to all packets played at tournaments Seton previously competed at. We did three tournaments that all used NAQT questions. If you get an account at naqt.com, and establish yourself as the new coach, you'll be able to view those rounds online. Those rounds will be very similar in style to what you would play at college events, so you definitely could use those for practices with the team.
When I started this project on Catie's request, I had mentally committed myself to this experiment for only four years, and when the team was finally done with its last match this third year, I had planned to shoot for a final goal. That goal was to have the students who were graduating beginning to impart their knowledge to the team's less experienced players. Before they left, they were going to be the coaches for the new students to come. My advice to you is to not let three years pass before trying to have experienced players help your new players to learn. When you have experienced players, they should be reading the team practice questions, writing their own practice questions or flash cards for the team, and sharing with new players how they learned things. If you can get your team to do this and close the loop, it will make your job as coach dramatically easier and give your team the chance to learn how to teach others. They will find the process as rewarding as you do.
If you need my help, you'll have it. All you need to do is start messing around with the documents in the drive, notices of changes to the documents will show up in my email. And if some time has passed, and I can't help any more, you'll probably have a copy of the book I wrote during my time with the Seton team.
There are thousands of other schools out there competing, with students learning and learning confidence from learning quiz bowl. Most of them have coaches who will be more than willing to help you. Your goal is to find among the student body those who enjoy this so much that they become the vessel for that spark of passion or madness that keeps these programs running. If you can find even one of those inside the school, you'll have an easy time of it. This will be work, but hopefully with what we've left you here, you won't need to flail in the dark. A plan puts you ahead of 90% of the teams out there, and you've got a plan that works to start it, you just have to keep it running once it starts.
Good luck,
Dwight Kidder
It's particularly tough for me because this is probably ending this year not because of a loss, but because of a lack of interest and conflicting schedules. After turning down the taping date of January 15 having committed to it before Christmas, we were asked at the end of January if we could take the slot for episode 22, February 10. So we put out the notice on January 29, again at practice on the 30th, and a second email on the same day with the instruction that we needed to know, up or down, by the morning of the 4th.
Being able to pull out without consequence the first time meant there was never any impetus to commit. On Tuesday, after double-checking that none of the four candidates for the team had responded to an urgent call for commitments to the date, I waived off the episode 22 slot, and told the producers that we couldn't get a commitment out of anyone for two runs, so we should just be passed over for this competition season. There were only five more matches in the preliminaries, so I didn't think it would be fairer to bow out now rather than leave everyone hanging and possibly overbooked later.
I'm feeling bad tonight because I know that they'd have better than a fighting chance if they got to taping. And that's compounded by the fact that I know if we got through taping, we'd be newsworthy again in the school, and the commitment problem would evaporate.
So that's it. I don't know that tomorrow's the end. I'd say it's 70-30 for this year, and maybe 60-40 for good. There's still a chance that everyone shows up tomorrow and this is silly to write out now. There's two more tournaments in the city that we could get people to, but we need a quorum to attend those as much as for television.
As for me, I'm sensing the end of teaching them new stuff, over three years I've covered all the essential pieces of the television program canon, and the basics of circuit competition. Most of what's left is reinforcement, sliding down the long tail in categories, and spaced repetition. Once that's in a rotation, I could start having the seniors recruiting and teaching next year's class the ropes. Of course that requires having seniors that don't have conflicting schedules.
I don't think newsletter is going to end tonight, either. I may have the pieces written for the book, and there may not be new lessons learned at practice, but I've got a healthy amount of work that can get done, and workshopped here. So it may be a boon to reaching the end of the book, but it sure doesn't feel like it.