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Students playing without chaperones

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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Charlie Dees
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Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

Moderator note: split from UIUC Earlybird Tournament

This is actually an interesting commentary on the Missouri circuit compared to stronger circuits such as Illinois. In Missouri, I'm sure every coach reading this is shocked to think that someone would allow a student to be the one registering for a tournament, with or without their coach getting in touch. In better developed circuits, on the other hand, it is not only allowed, it is encouraged for students who have the financial means but for whatever reason don't have the administrative means to go with their school team to sign up and pay their way to tournaments to play without coach supervision, even to tournaments as far away as this one. Thomas Jefferson magnet in Virginia notably had no coach at any point in the season when they won a national championship in 2008. Missouri needs to seriously rethink the institutionalized reasons there are that prevent motivated students from playing quizbowl tournaments with or without a coach, and maybe then we'll be able to have a stronger, more player oriented circuit.

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

ashkenaziCD wrote:This is actually an interesting commentary on the Missouri circuit compared to stronger circuits such as Illinois. In Missouri, I'm sure every coach reading this is shocked to think that someone would allow a student to be the one registering for a tournament, with or without their coach getting in touch. In better developed circuits, on the other hand, it is not only allowed, it is encouraged for students who have the financial means but for whatever reason don't have the administrative means to go with their school team to sign up and pay their way to tournaments to play without coach supervision, even to tournaments as far away as this one. Thomas Jefferson magnet in Virginia notably had no coach at any point in the season when they won a national championship in 2008. Missouri needs to seriously rethink the institutionalized reasons there are that prevent motivated students from playing quizbowl tournaments with or without a coach, and maybe then we'll be able to have a stronger, more player oriented circuit.
Chuq, suppose a team comprised exclusively of students, with no faculty involvement, went to one of your tournaments and any of these events happens:
  1. One of those students becomes ill, requiring his or her admission to hospital.
  2. One of those students causes the destruction or damaging of property at the tournament site.
  3. The vehicle carrying the team is driven by a student and becomes involved in a fatal crash.
How do you handle each situation?

Are you, as a tournament director, ready to deal with the safeguards of HIPPA, the process of rectifying legal issues involving conduct at your tournament, and the imminent statewide press coverage that comes from (worst-case scenario) a group of kids on the way to Columbia wiping out on I-70 and not living to tell about it?

And, were you a staff member at a school and willing to allow your kids to coordinate and attend tournaments on their own, how would you convince the activities director that all of your kids (some as young as 15) have the maturity and ability to safely get themselves to a tournament, conduct themselves in a responsible manner, show that they have all the bases cover in the event of an emergency, and get back in an equally if not more safe manner? And not only that, but not break the school's budget when it comes to lodging, fuel, and food?

There are a serious string of legal and PR issues attached to letting a group of teenagers drive around without faculty support, especially if they claim to represent their school and community.

I don't see this happening without serious arm-wrangling in administration offices, school board meetings, and perhaps even state courts. Schools, whether they be public or private and everything inbetween, have a paramount responsibility to not only educate but also assure the safety of their students, and do so in fiscally responsible manner. The way the operation of competitive activities in Missouri is structured to (as best possible) minimize the legal, fiscal, and PR risk to the school district, as well as ensure the safety of faculty and students.

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by Charlie Dees »

That doesn't address the fact that many places allow teams to enter under assumed names and just play without being an official "school team," with the knowledge of everybody there that the team is actually representing a school and just using a different name, which would not be currently allowed under MSHSAA rules due to the fact that said team would not be MSHSAA sanctioned. Also, again, if that were actually something that were enforced everywhere outside of Missouri, the 2008 NAQT national champions would have been forced to not compete, and I cannot find any particularly strong ethical defense for not allowing the best quizbowl team in the country to compete in a tournament to prove they are the best team in the country.

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

Suppose that happens again this summer. The best team in the nation is from a school in Virginia who just doesn't happen to have an active faculty sponsor. Rather than fly into Hartsfeld-Jackson, the kids opt to drive down I-85. Somewhere around Greenville, SC, the vehicle's involved in a fatal accident and two of the kids are dead.

Major news media pick up on it. Kids driving, without a chaperon from their school, to a tournament. The school was OK with it. NAQT was OK with it. The parents were OK with it, but now they're wanting to deal with their grief by way of wrongful death suits.

How does NAQT absolve themselves from the legal hellhole that might await them?

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by Charlie Dees »

Someone from TJ's team let me know that they had to turn in permission slips to the school at the beginning of the year, before they played in any tournaments, which makes it pretty much impossible for the scenario you've described to play out as a nasty lawsuit that could involve the schools or the tournament director. That is an easy enough solution.

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

ashkenaziCD wrote:Someone from TJ's team let me know that they had to turn in permission slips to the school at the beginning of the year, before they played in any tournaments, which makes it pretty much impossible for the scenario you've described to play out as a nasty lawsuit that could involve the schools or the tournament director. That is an easy enough solution.
Can they provide detail of these permission slips, principally with regard to assumption of responsibilities, emergency procedures, etc.?

If players wanting to have greater ability to pursue tournaments want to successfully claim this responsibility, it would be prudent for them to be knowledgeable of these responsibilities, and for parents and school administrators to provide guidance, advice, and boundaries if need be. That said, let me postulate a unlikely-to-happen-but-dangerously-plausible scenario:

TD hosts a tournament, on a state university campus, where some of the teams didn't have faculty chaperons or misrepresented a school. At the end of the tournament, a last check of the rooms finds that a video projector has been trashed and rendered inoperable. The equipment's valued at over $600, and all the university has to go on to make someone pay for the damage is the TD, or his/her club that sponsored the tournament.

After exchanging e-mails with the schools present, the TD determines that the damage was caused by someone on one of the independent teams. What does the TD do?

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Charlie Dees
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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by Charlie Dees »

Bill the individual players on the non-school team for their destruction of property, and if they don't pay bring in legal help.

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

ashkenaziCD wrote:Bill the individual players on the non-school team for their destruction of property, and if they don't pay bring in legal help.
I would thus presume you have the address of all those players, and that the university isn't taking their own steps as well?

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by Charlie Dees »

The part about the university is silly - the only steps the university can take initially is to find out from us why the projector was broken. When they find out, they could choose to bill us for the damages, which would be the sole reason why we would need to then have to bill the players, or they could ask us for the names of the players and could then take their own investigation from there, at which point we no longer have any responsibilities. As for getting players' addresses, if they are refusing to comply with our requests via email, we would know which school they are from (because the whole point of this situation would be to let a school team play under a non-school name, so they wouldn't be let in the field in the first place if we didn't know where they are from), and could, as I said, get the law involved if it became warranted, because they destroyed someone else's property, which is illegal (and also because they are refusing to pay money they owe, which is also illegal).

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

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Then it's safe to say that this school (or group of students, should they wind up being independent) won't be attending any tournament at the university for years to come. Now if it turns out this group improperly represented a school, usually it falls on the misrepresented school to come up with better safeguards.

Hence: mandatory faculty oversight of a program. If a program currently exists there and those kids attend that school, the faculty will be under closer scrutiny from the powers that be. If a program doesn't exist, then the school is left to either start one anyway, keeping a tight leash on the kids, or deny the existence of such a program, which would only hurt kids that want to play and do so. Again, from a school administrator's perspective, they have to balance the aspirations of their students with their safety and resulting negative PR from when they do something stupid.

Getting back to my principal concern about students' safety, and the positive reputation and fiscal control of the schools they represent: It is nice for players to scout for tournaments and relay them to the coach, but unless those players are willing and able to assume all the risks associated with representing their school absent of active oversight, it is necessary that faculty presence remain. Of course, the coach can, if he or she feels comfortable with it and school administration doesn't freak out about it, allow the team the ability to determine which tournaments to attend. At the end of the day, though, it's not the team captain or members that request the AD or district comptroller to send a check to the TD. It's the coach.

Even if MSHSAA were to rescind the restriction, school districts would still find it necessary, in the interests of allaying the concerns aforementioned, to maintain such oversight. And tournament directors, to minimize the risk of damaging the reputation of their tournaments and organization, need to expect the same. The age of majority in Missouri is 17, and more often than not teams at tournaments include persons younger than 17, so proper adult supervision of individual teams is still necessary, and personally I believe TDs should ensure this.

Again, this oversight isn't limited to reputation and fiscal costs. It's the players' safety getting to and from there.

In April 1998, members of Blue Valley High School's softball team didn't want to ride the school bus to a game five miles away from the school, instead opting to drive themselves. A car driven by one of those players crossed into the opposing lanes en route to the game and crashed into a van, killing her and the two teammates riding in her car. As a result, Blue Valley and many schools now require signed permission forms to opt out of district transportation.

Should players take it upon themselves sign up and pay for tournaments, and represent themselves in a proper manner independent of a school, their safety is still paramount. I would hope tournament directors encourage that players have a safe and responsible mode of transportation, as to minimize potential risks (PR mostly) to the tournament and hosts and, most importantly, maximize the safety of participants.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

That does not substantially addresses the most common situation I'm discussing, which is not schools telling teams to go without a chaperone, but teams playing under non-school names so as to prevent there from being a school related liability, which a simple change of MSHSAA rules would then allow. If a team were to choose to pay for a tournament out of pocket, play under an assumed name, and not notify their school district about it, there is literally nothing the school can do to deal with these students, because they are operating independently, and it's not like you can expel students for this. Given that you keep going back to discussing things like fiscal control over the team, I still am unsure if you are really aware of how these situations work in the real world. In any case, the point about legal majority is something that also logically is inconsistent, because if a student has not attained legal majority, then it should be up to their parents to let them participate in something in the first place, so if a kid leaves the house and travels all the way to a quizbowl tournament, it then follows that you can assume their parents approved that, and if they didn't then the fault lies with them for not properly supervising their children. I also don't think that people would really be making these trips without their parents anyway - unless I am mistaken about driving laws, you can't get to and from a tournament on your own legally unless you are 16 (and many many many 16 year olds dont have cars anyway), and I can't envision many circumstances where a player who isn't 17 would somehow be able to get to a tournament without their parents coming along. If a parent is with one of these teams, then of course I would feel fully comfortable about them. Lastly, this is not a radical thing I'm proposing, this has happened at numerous incredibly prestigious tournaments, such as many all over Illinois, the one run by Dunbar, those at UMD, VCU, TJ high school, PACE nationals last year, and the list goes on, and nothing has ever happened. This has been viewed nationally as an incredibly positive move, in large part because no other regions are as tightly bound up in bureaucracy as we are, which make a lot of the things you bring up non-issues. Unless the rest of the country is wrong, and this move that allows motivated players the opportunity to play more as opposed to less quizbowl and thus improve more is actually going to ruin many tournaments, I expect you will find that this is all just another great example of you blowing something idiotic out of proportion, which is pretty much all you ever do.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by ZhangC1459 »

ashkenaziCD wrote:... I expect you will find that this is all just another great example of you blowing something idiotic out of proportion, which is pretty much all you ever do.

... lulz owned.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

Since I apparently make sense to this forum about as often as Chuq uses line breaks, I'm going to have to be the kid in the back row with the TA helping me dissect what's being sought here. Are you wanting teams independent of schools to compete in tournaments in Missouri? If that's the case, then honestly I just see this opening a can of worms that stands to undermine the concept of scholastic competition, which has safeguards in place so that a player's schoolwork (supposedly) comes first.

While the rule change would enable a competitive network similar to those lauded by Chuq, if MSHSAA were to eliminate this standard, you'd have club teams (which could border on semi-professional) competing against high school teams in nearly every other sport. This would be initially prevalent with swimming, as swimmers with Olympic potential would compete for their club against their own classmates. It wouldn't be long before U18 soccer, football, and basketball teams, amongst others, pursue competition against depleted high school teams.

Now, it might be a good thing for sport in general (and please forgive the digression, as MSHSAA by-laws concerning scholar bowl have a tendency to reflect by-laws from various sports). The strict establishment of supposedly amateur sport tiers pegged to high school and college, instead of encouraging focus on the classroom, causes athletes to do the bare minimum in the classroom to focus on attracting D-I recruiters. State activities board, in spite of their being supposed to focus on keeping the system amateur, is in turn reinforcing this. Stop the strict pegging and increase the relevance of club teams, and you minimize the relevance of high school teams and, subsequently, state activities boards. Minimize MSHSAA's role and hello Chuq's dream world of superior scholar bowl competition in Missouri. I just hope that dream world is just as appealing to the successful teams of NKC, Helias and Clayton as it is to programs in operation from Rock Port to South Pemiscot, and Seneca to Clark County.

In short, MSHSAA eliminating that rule would in effect be the organization throwing itself into the river and slowly drowning as it becomes more and more irrelevant. Of course, if you want MSHSAA to drown, there it is explained for everyone else wanting to join you.

Zhang: constructive criticism would be appreciated as opposed to one-line zingers.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

Because none of your interpretations in the above post of what I'm discussing are correct, in simple terms:

*Teams representing schools play quizbowl at all high school tournaments. I believe at all tournaments at all levels, other than those explicitly named as opens in the college quizbowl sense, the teams participating should be strictly made of players from the same school (other than emergency scab teams as situations dictate).

*Situations come up that make it impossible for some teams to be accompanied or otherwise officially approved by their school. In other states, which have less Orwellian rules, groups of students that all attend the same school will sometimes pay out of pocket and travel without their school's supervision to play in tournaments they want to go to. Usually, these teams will play under assumed names, in order to prevent there from being any potential liability on the school's part. This probably waives their ability to sue people if something goes wrong. Tournament directors in other regions (the group I've listed above, not to mention essentially every tournament Ike Jose played in his senior year) have made it clear that they have no problems allowing these sorts of teams - which are entirely made up of students from a single school - into their fields and treating them like they are their actual school team in all but name.

*MSHSAA rules currently prevent these kinds of teams from playing in any MSHSAA sanctioned event, because even though they may be comprised entirely of students who attend a single, MSHSAA approved school, their using an assumed team name would automatically disqualify them, even if they were chaperoned by their school coach. (As a side note, Rockford Auburn's team actually won a tournament under an assumed name last year while their coach accompanied them, because their district policies hindered both the team and the coach from being officially approved to go, so there are actually situations where you might need to do this even if you are with a coach).

*I believe that MSHSAA rules should be changed to loosen the restrictions on the abilities of players to do things like this. The results of this practice elsewhere have been incredibly positive, because it allows high school teams the chance to maximize their participation in quizbowl regardless of how much their administration may hamstring them. If a team has a bad coach, or a player wants to go play a tournament solo but the rest of their team is busy, or a coach is busy for some reason during a tournament, or if there is some bureaucratic reason why your school is preventing your team from participating in a quizbowl tournament that motivated players want to go to and could derive great benefit from, the option for teams to play under a different, fictional school name allows them an easy solution to that problem. It results in the team being able to do what they should be able to do in the first place, which is play a game they love, and can help ensure that teams that have the motivation to be very active in quizbowl are not denied their ability to be as active as possible.

If my choice is between supporting an option that is going to allow players to better flourish, within the bounds of playing on a single school team, or stifle their ability to play because of forces that are wholly out of their control, I will always err on the side of the former, and the quizbowl community at large has chosen that side as well.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

To further clarify:

I think in the best possible situation, high school teams should be accompanied by coaches. Coaches provide very important functions in many different ways for quizbowl teams, and the best teams that remain consistent often are those with the best coaches. If a tournament were run entirely on the basis of having high schoolers being in charge of themselves, unless there is a somewhat select audience, things would probably be a mess, and people would probably get unruly, and it would probably not go very well. I don't dispute this. However, there is not really any possible situation that I can see in the future where you could actually look at that being a possibility. Almost all teams are going to have coaches, because for the most part, the group of high school students that are actually motivated enough to do something like play under an assumed name with no support is incredibly limited. It is almost exclusively going to be drawn from the already very small group of teams that are highly motivated. Furthermore, most of the motivated teams are going to have coaches anyway, for the reasons I outlined at the beginning of the post, making it not a problem for them. The reason I want this rule changed is to benefit the very small group of people who are both highly motivated to play quizbowl and have factors beyond their control that make it impossible for them to engage their motivation. Even for most of those teams, it is only one or two tournaments a year where they would possibly need to do this. I would only advocate that teams play under an assumed team name if they truly have no other options, and only at the absolute minimum number of events needed, with the hope that they will end up with a coach that will start to take things seriously and they won't have to do this anymore.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

First of all, thank you for making use of the enter key to break it down for those of us who don't take too well to blocks of text. Had that been posted earlier, we might have spared everyone here a night of entertaining blithering from yours truly. (OK, I might be the only one here who doesn't take too well to the lack of line breaks, but I get the feeling coaches who are on the fence on fundamental changes to improve our activity might now have a better understanding. Also, for the benefit of any polylogophobes present, I'm going to indicate now:
**RIDICULOUSLY LONG POST ALERT**)

Second, your clarification is appreciated. I agree. Unfortunately, we might be going around in circles because of differing views on semantics and the root of what's holding back teams from competing sans coach and/or sans school support. Which might be futile, as let's face it, MSHSAA really only matters in scholar bowl when it comes to districts and state contests, contests which I believe the majority of this board see as a joke compared to bona-fide NAQT and PACE competitions. Unfortunately, as no one connected to MSHSAA (be they on staff, a paid shill, advisory board member or rules interpreter) has weighed in (and if any of the aforementioned is present, please do so!), I'm going to have to play devil's interpreter, or maybe continue as our hero's punching bag.

In the interests of allowing the nitpicking of what MSHSAA has said about the situations we've expounded upon, I'm going to post verbatim, from MSHSAA's handbook, By-Laws 101 and 103, including attached Q&A. 101 deals with "sans school support", and 103 the situation with a lack of faculty staffing.
101.0 COMPETITION ONLY WITH MEMBER SCHOOLS
No member school of this Association may compete in any interscholastic activities with any other school, or against any other team, that is not a member of this Association or like association, or with a school that is suspended from the Association, or with a college/university team on which there are contestants above high school rank. However, a member school of this association which is a special education school organized and administered exclusively for the handicapped may compete with a team representing any non-member school or institution by securing permission from the Board of Directors.

RELATED QUESTION(S) AND ANSWER(S) BELOW

Q1: May our high school basketball team scrimmage against an area community college team or against a local city league team comprised of high school age players?
A1: No in both cases. A school team may compete only against teams representing a MSHSAA member high school or teams from schools that are members of a like state association. The only exception to this would be an alumni game when conducted in accord with provisions of By-Law 302. This restriction applies to so-called scrimmages as well as to games.

Q2: We have a student at our school who is an outstanding distance runner. The student is desiring to participate in some open events involving college age or older athletes at some of the invitational meets sponsored by colleges during the spring sport season. Would this be permissible if our school track team is participating in the high school portion of this meet?
A2: No. A school team and the school’s individual athletes, while representing the school, may only compete with and against teams/students representing a MSHSAA member school or teams/students from schools that are members of a like state association. High school students representing their school may not compete against non-high school students except as provided in By-Laws 236 and 237.

Q3: Our MMEA (Missouri Music Educators Association) District conducts auditions for a junior high (grades 7-8) honor band and choir. Is our school eligible to participate?
A3: Yes, provided your junior high school is a MSHSAA member school, and has registered in the activity of music and has completed a music eligibility roster through the MSHSAA website. This would also apply to high school music programs as well. No member school may participate in competitive and/or evaluative events against a nonmember school, or a member school that has not registered for the activity of music.
This by-law cancels out the inclusion of non-school teams at tournaments, principally because of MSHSAA's interest to keep competition exclusively amongst schools and not including city league hoopsters, country club swimmers, and Legion sluggers.

Further, By-law 102 limits membership in MSHSAA to schools that have at least five non-related students and are governed by a Board of Directors or comparable body. Thus, individual teams cannot hold membership in MSHSAA. The moment a school says a team cannot compete, any attempt for them to re-organize and compete results in them being a non-school team (such as the Rockford Auburn situation referenced early this morning). More often, though, there are academic or discipline issues for grounding a team, or the F word I like to throw around here, as opposed to administrators being twits.

As this is MSHSAA's first by-law, I must presume this to be a bedrock by-law that ensures such activities are pursued in an amateur manner and that the focus of high school competitors remain on their academics. Any such serious attempt to change or add an exception to this rule would be monumental. It will be difficult to enact such an exception, even one carefully tailored to apply just to an Auburn situation where a team is willing and able to go but their district pulls the plug for no apparently valid reason. Such a narrow exception would need to make sure it doesn't allow teams not fielded from exactly one school to compete. As such, it is very likely that only MSHSAA's executive board would be able to grant such an exception.
103.0 RESPONSIBILITY FOR SUPERVISION
No individual student, team, or activities group shall be permitted to participate in interscholastic events without being accompanied and supervised by a member of the school faculty or administrative staff of the applicable member school. A school faculty member or administrator for the applicable member school must be present at all events and practices in which cheerleaders participate whose primary responsibility is to supervise the cheerleaders. It is not allowable for one faculty member from one school in a multiple high school/middle school district to supervise all students of all schools of the multiple high school/middle schools districts under this provision.

RELATED QUESTION(S) AND ANSWER(S) BELOW

Q1: We only had one athlete qualify for the state track meet. Our coach will be unable to accompany her to the state meet. May she participate if her parents take her to the meet without a school faculty member going with her?
A1: No. An individual student, team, or activities group shall not be permitted to participate in any interscholastic event without being accompanied and supervised by a member of the school faculty or administrative staff.

Q2: If a coach is ejected from a contest by a game official and there is no faculty member from the school present at the contest to assume his/her supervisory responsibilities on the bench, may the game continue?
A2: No. MSHSAA By-Law 103 provides that no team or activities group shall be permitted to participate in interscholastic events without being accompanied and supervised by a member of the school faculty or administrative staff. If a coach is ejected from a contest and there is no faculty member present to take over his/her coaching supervisory responsibilities, the game shall be forfeited at that point.
While I wouldn't mind a TD looking the other way if a parent acts as a coach or chaperon in the event a coach can't be present, there's more to being a coach than imploring four players to buzz in faster. Additionally, By-Law 127 requires all programs to have a qualified coach in order to compete.

As I stressed earlier when throwing darts into the wall, competitor safety is a critical responsibility of the coach. While scholar bowl coaches just have to be "approved" by MSHSAA before they can coach, other coaches have to have first aid emergency training (a skill that everyone should at least consider learning) and completed a college-level course on coaching principles. Additionally, it is the responsibility of the coach to maintain on their person, for use only in such an emergency, medical information of each player. This information's confidentiality is regulated by federal laws. Thus, MSHSAA and member schools have to take measures to ensure that a coach or faculty member attending tournaments are capable of handling such a situation should it arise, principally to minimize risk of civil action by parents against a school.

While one can argue that there's not a risk of getting a concussion or breaking a leg while playing in a scholar bowl match, instead issues come up concerning medication (diabetes, allergies, etc.) or, while in the process of walking on an icy sidewalk or down the stairs, falling and breaking a leg or getting a concussion. If there's not a coach present, then it falls to either the parent or the players themselves to handle the situation. Federal laws (namely HIPPA and FERPA) make it very difficult for this information to be imparted onto someone from outside school staff.

However, it would be quite easy to gain approval to coach scholar bowl from MSHSAA. By-Law 130, quoted in its entirely, deals with how scholar bowl coaches are approved.
130. REQUIREMENTS FOR SPEECH DIRECTORS AND SCHOLAR BOWL COACHES
130.1 Speech Directors and Scholar Bowl coaches must be “approved” by the MSHSAA office prior to instructing students in the respective interscholastic activity. An egregious or intentional violation of the MSHSAA by-laws or the rules/regulations of the activity may cause the Board of Directors to withhold “approved” status.
That's it. No table indicating first aid requirements. No mention that they have to be faculty. No mandatory college course. Heck, no college credit minimums. Now granted, it would be a wise idea to make sure a parent is in good standing with the district, most suitably by joining the substitute pool and stepping in as a regular volunteer with the program. In most likelihood, should a parent be in such a situation, he or she would let the kids coach themselves. Else, they wouldn't be around the program for much longer.

Depending how easy it is to gain "approval" from MSHSAA, I would have to say through the vague nature of By-Law 130, the ability for a parent to become a substitute coach is in place.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

I am not interested in the fact of what specific rules are in place to deal with these situations, since I think everybody knows that the rules are tilted in favor of preventing these sorts of teams from playing. I guess that is what is missed by all of that post. When I say something about what rules I would like MSHSAA to change, as longtime readers of this board will know, often the things I propose are things I have no expectation would actually be implemented by the MSHSAA, because the MSHSAA is exactly the kind of bureaucratic institution that will have all kinds of incredibly difficult to change long standing policies - for example, my constant call for elimination of computation tossups, or to eliminate the 50-tossup format, are things that I have no reason to expect to change anytime soon. My request to have the MSHSAA change the rules to allow these sorts of teams to play is another one of those things. As you can tell from my opening post in the thread, the reason I was discussing it in the first place was because it is yet another example of how the very fact that MSHSAA, with things like the "bedrock" by-law you brought up, is involved in quizbowl immediately brings us as a state below the curve. I was comparing the situations of how a tournament in Illinois handles students having freedom to organize their quizbowl schedules, leading David to interpret William's post as a registration, with the situation in Missouri, where the idea of students planning their school quizbowl trips is so preposterous that WIlliam could make that post without having any idea anybody would even think to take his word as official. It was a good platform to demonstrate some of the incredible differences in the MSHSAA-fueled, coach-driven environment of Missouri quizbowl, with the much more student-driven, less regulated, and infinitely stronger environments in more competitive circuits.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charbroil »

L-Town Expatriate wrote:...MSHSAA's interest to keep competition exclusively amongst schools and not including city league hoopsters, country club swimmers, and Legion sluggers...
Just to note, I don't think anyone here is arguing for the inclusion of open high school teams in most tournaments, so this issue really doesn't apply.

Also, in regards to your comment about safety, how is the possibility of someone being injured traveling to a Quiz Bowl tournament different from the possibility of someone being injured traveling to, say, a chess tournament or dance competition (or any other activity which doesn't require coach participation). Are you saying that no competition involving high schoolers should exist without the involvement of a coach to prevent these kinds of issues? I imagine not, so why the emphasis on Quiz Bowl as an activity which should have coaches to prevent transportation injuries?

Finally, it's worth noting that one of your own examples described how schools can avoid having to deal with the liability issue through liability waivers for the use of non-school transportation to competitions, so that really seems to be a moot point. For that matter, I know from personal experience that plenty of MSHSAA activities requiring coaches don't require school provided transportation, so compelling teams to have coaches doesn't at all mean that they'll be traveling in school transportation, making that issue irrelevant to this discussion.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by ajax »

I'd rather have students have adult coaches as chaperones. Adults can be more responsible than teenagers and can keep the teenagers out of trouble. Plus it helps to have a coach in quiz bowl; without coaches, team squabbles and discipline issues among players increases and can destroy a team. A team must have a leader, preferably to me a person with more years experience than their team.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

ashkenaziCD wrote:I am not interested in the fact of what specific rules are in place to deal with these situations, since I think everybody knows that the rules are tilted in favor of preventing these sorts of teams from playing. I guess that is what is missed by all of that post. When I say something about what rules I would like MSHSAA to change, as longtime readers of this board will know, often the things I propose are things I have no expectation would actually be implemented by the MSHSAA, because the MSHSAA is exactly the kind of bureaucratic institution that will have all kinds of incredibly difficult to change long standing policies - for example, my constant call for elimination of computation tossups, or to eliminate the 50-tossup format, are things that I have no reason to expect to change anytime soon. My request to have the MSHSAA change the rules to allow these sorts of teams to play is another one of those things. As you can tell from my opening post in the thread, the reason I was discussing it in the first place was because it is yet another example of how the very fact that MSHSAA, with things like the "bedrock" by-law you brought up, is involved in quizbowl immediately brings us as a state below the curve. I was comparing the situations of how a tournament in Illinois handles students having freedom to organize their quizbowl schedules, leading David to interpret William's post as a registration, with the situation in Missouri, where the idea of students planning their school quizbowl trips is so preposterous that WIlliam could make that post without having any idea anybody would even think to take his word as official. It was a good platform to demonstrate some of the incredible differences in the MSHSAA-fueled, coach-driven environment of Missouri quizbowl, with the much more student-driven, less regulated, and infinitely stronger environments in more competitive circuits.
Forgive me for turning a statement of fact complaining about Missouri's inferior competitive climate into an attempt to bring about a discussion to possible improve things. We could use a few more discussion threads on ways to improve the activity, and have it out in writing so coaches curious about this can review the threads and maybe, just maybe, we'll sway some opinions. (Let's just make sure one of us isn't the Judean People's Front and the other the Popular Front of Judea.)
Charbroil wrote:Just to note, I don't think anyone here is arguing for the inclusion of open high school teams in most tournaments, so this issue really doesn't apply.
This is principally a semantics argument. What makes a team of players and a coach from the same school, operating without that member school's sanction, different from a basketball team of kids recruited by some guy that claims he can land them a pro deal? Or the team of swimmers just three breaths away from competing alongside Michael Phelps and Rebecca Soni? I submit my belief that in MSHSAA's eyes, there would be no difference when it comes to eligibility. None of these organizations described would be sponsored by a member school. To make this work, you'd have to argue that there is a difference, and also convince MSHSAA that it should assume the right, on petition from a team in an Auburn scenario, to override an individual school's decisions on which activities they abstain from competing.
Charbroil wrote:Also, in regards to your comment about safety, how is the possibility of someone being injured traveling to a Quiz Bowl tournament different from the possibility of someone being injured traveling to, say, a chess tournament or dance competition (or any other activity which doesn't require coach participation). Are you saying that no competition involving high schoolers should exist without the involvement of a coach to prevent these kinds of issues? I imagine not, so why the emphasis on Quiz Bowl as an activity which should have coaches to prevent transportation injuries?
I am not saying that coaches are a necessity; I'm saying I believe MSHSAA believes that. And as I'm only speaking about activities overseen by MSHSAA, chess is irrelevant for this discussion. (You may all exclaim a collective "Thank (insert possibly existent deity or deities of your choice)".) Dance competitions and performances fall under MSHSAA's jurisdiction. Because of the physical nature of dance competitions and sideline/center court performances, sponsors have to take first aid courses and receive approval from MSHSAA if they're not faculty.
Charbroil wrote:Finally, it's worth noting that one of your own examples described how schools can avoid having to deal with the liability issue through liability waivers for the use of non-school transportation to competitions, so that really seems to be a moot point. For that matter, I know from personal experience that plenty of MSHSAA activities requiring coaches don't require school provided transportation, so compelling teams to have coaches doesn't at all mean that they'll be traveling in school transportation, making that issue irrelevant to this discussion.
Unfortunately, that becomes a circular argument when the school tells the team they can't go. By going on their own, the team wouldn't have access to the school's transportation, insurance policies covering the district bus (or van), or ability to contract litigation services. I would also have to presume the coach assumes personal responsibility, and it'd affect his or her personal policies if something went amiss.

Additionally, requirement to use school transportation varies from district to district. I would hope districts require it and have a liability waiver in place. Lord knows I wasn't the sharpest driver in high school.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by socalcaptain »

As a substitute teacher, I'm inclined to agree with those who are advocating for such a requirement. I nearly got in trouble just this past Friday for allowing four students to be in the hallway unsupervised, just outside my door. The only thing that saved me was the fact that the lesson plans I was left in fact guided me to allow the activity that required them to be outside.

My point being, I can certainly see the MSHSAA/school point of view here. I think anytime a group of students is not representing a school (i.e., not competing as a school team) they should be able to compete with or without a chaperone, but that for reasons that go way beyond keeping kids under control, school-affiliated teams should always have some kind of adult chaperone. As to whether that person should be a faculty member, I'm fairly ambivalent. I certainly would hope that any competent adult could handle whatever issues arise. Maximally, requiring said adult to hold a substitute teacher certificate might clear up any hazy legal responsibilities (as a school employee, having access to medical info, etc.)

I think what might be a better argument is to allow MSHSAA member schools to compete against open teams as well. This might open the door to some consequences, but in general most of your quizbowl population isn't going to up and leave their schools to create superteams or anything. My only qualm would be that there's something to be said for school spirit and rivalries.

I feel for the plight of the student who can't compete at a tournament because his/her school or coach won't allow them to sign up. Heck, I was one of them my senior year of high school once I joined here and saw the light. But there are certainly better ways to fix this problem than to let teenagers loose. That is to say, why not write letters to the school board, talk with the principal and the AD, and try to get community support?

We have the same problem as every competitive activity out there: we have to try and balance what's best for the "sport", the players, the school, and the audience. (Given that for us the latter isn't so big...) This is just one of those cases where what's best for quiz bowl in general may not be best for any one of those other factors.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

That is to say, why not write letters to the school board, talk with the principal and the AD, and try to get community support?
Those do nothing to solve the here and now problem of a student not being allowed to participate in an activity they love, and strike me as incredibly unrealistic. To take the case of a school with a bad coach, principals have no reason to believe a student when they come and tell them their coach is bad, because principals have no way to measure that unless they themselves know how quizbowl works. Principals also are often incredibly prone to not taking student complaints about ineffectual managing of an extracurricular activity very seriously, because I'm sure they have to deal with all kinds of nonsense student complaints all the time, and thus are much more likely to be hardened towards getting involved against the teacher, their co-worker, in favor of the student, the person they and the teacher are authority figures over. Most importantly, a principal has to worry about the total administration of a government apparatus that is responsible for educating and disciplining anywhere from around 100 to over 2,000 teenagers. Especially in the larger schools, the idea that getting involved in the quizbowl team's problems with their coach is going to be anything that will even remotely be prioritized by a principal when they have a billion other things with infinitely greater ramifications to deal with all the time is wishful thinking that may actually pay off once in every, oh, thousand or so cases. Similarly, I cannot see the average AD siding against a coach very often, and getting community support for quizbowl, noted activity that has almost no audience, which has no real high profile of any kind is going to be exceptionally rare. Pursuing those things and hoping that they will pay off in time for you to not have your entire high school playing career squandered is about the least likely avenue to pay off that I could imagine.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by socalcaptain »

I guess this is once again a case of my coming from a small high school and trying to generalize. But let's put it this way - if my principal had spent more than 50% of his time dealing directly with students/discipline, then I'd be shocked. And, I probably had a lot more rapport with my principal/AD(s) than a lot of students in schools.

It's likely that in a bigger school (400+), you may not be able to pull this off. I'm convinced that the right student or collective effort in a high school my size or smaller could likely at least get their principal to make a slightly concerted effort to prod the quizbowl team in the right direction. At the very least, if the best student on the team walks in and says, "Hey, Coach X is not signing us up for any tournaments. Any chance you could convince him to add a few? We'd sure as heck like to bring in some extra trophies and wins," the principal might consider approving one or two extra trips or helping the team find another chaperone if the coach can't go.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

ashkenaziCD wrote:
That is to say, why not write letters to the school board, talk with the principal and the AD, and try to get community support?
Those do nothing to solve the here and now problem of a student not being allowed to participate in an activity they love, and strike me as incredibly unrealistic. To take the case of a school with a bad coach, principals have no reason to believe a student when they come and tell them their coach is bad, because principals have no way to measure that unless they themselves know how quizbowl works. Principals also are often incredibly prone to not taking student complaints about ineffectual managing of an extracurricular activity very seriously, because I'm sure they have to deal with all kinds of nonsense student complaints all the time, and thus are much more likely to be hardened towards getting involved against the teacher, their co-worker, in favor of the student, the person they and the teacher are authority figures over. Most importantly, a principal has to worry about the total administration of a government apparatus that is responsible for educating and disciplining anywhere from around 100 to over 2,000 teenagers. Especially in the larger schools, the idea that getting involved in the quizbowl team's problems with their coach is going to be anything that will even remotely be prioritized by a principal when they have a billion other things with infinitely greater ramifications to deal with all the time is wishful thinking that may actually pay off once in every, oh, thousand or so cases. Similarly, I cannot see the average AD siding against a coach very often, and getting community support for quizbowl, noted activity that has almost no audience, which has no real high profile of any kind is going to be exceptionally rare. Pursuing those things and hoping that they will pay off in time for you to not have your entire high school playing career squandered is about the least likely avenue to pay off that I could imagine.
This is a disheartening and disingenuous statement, even if it is reality. Maybe my reading skills are off, but it sounds to me as though you're telling kids in a similar situation to not bother approaching their administration. Is that what you'll tell someone who e-mails you asking for help or advice in dealing with such a situation?

If a student truly loves quiz bowl, they shouldn't just play and seek out tournaments. They need to stand up for their ability to do so when it's threatened. As a precocious and outspoken advocate for my high school program, I arrived at Liberty to find our trophies buried behind posters of homecoming court candidates. You can ask our student council adviser how much of a thorn in her side I was about that. The argument I made to ensure our relevance to our AD, StuCo and administration: the fact scholar bowl an activity sanctioned by the same association that sanctioned a sport in which our boys went 31-0 just a few years earlier.

Pushing that argument to the limit, our all-state accolades were added to the wall of honor. Our trophies moved to an expanded trophy case. And when we won state in 2003, our trophy sat just under our 1998 boys' basketball trophy. Same story for 2005. Full-blown, live press events celebrated our successes on the district's cable channel and both local weeklies. Both team pictures were right at the entrance to Cokely Fieldhouse before we got bumped in favor of championship teams in cross country, softball and track. (Unfortunately, we never got banners; our AD said it was because we never played in the gym, the same rationale invoked when they moved the team pictures to the side.)

I didn't do this just to get my name up there and brag about it; I never told my parents about it and instead let them stumble upon it during our tournament in 2003. I did it to preserve our successes for future classes of Blue Jays, their successes too, and to set a precedent where any activity that wins a MSHSAA state championship—be they athletic or not—would receive comparable treatment.

If people here are wanting to improve quiz bowl in Missouri, it makes sense to not just host tournaments for the programs that do exist, but make available advice and pointers for students wanting to start or improve a program, and work with administrators and faculty to ensure its sustainability. This circuit will be stronger when a plethora of capable teams are competing in every corner of our state and able to make a stunning impact at the national level. We're not going to do that hosting the same tournaments for the same teams.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charlie Dees »

This is a disheartening and disingenuous statement, even if it is reality. Maybe my reading skills are off, but it sounds to me as though you're telling kids in a similar situation to not bother approaching their administration. Is that what you'll tell someone who e-mails you asking for help or advice in dealing with such a situation?
If it is reality, then it can't possibly be disingenuous at the same time. In any case, I would never tell people to not bother trying to contact their administration for support of the quizbowl team. I would, and did, say that that is going to be one of the least effective methods of dealing with a program that is hamstrung by their coach or administration, which is a specific instance that has nothing to do with generally asking for administrative help and promoting your team the way you did. Having an established team that is led by a bad coach is not a situation I think is at all likely to be fixed very often by asking the administration to pressure the coach to change. Administrators have no reason to think the coach is doing things wrong (and if there is a longtime coach, especially one that has won a few tournaments they can point to, then it will be even harder).

To highlight the contrasts with what I am saying and what you think I am saying, I happen to believe that you are going to be in an infinitely better position to go to your principal and get serious, effective help if your school does not have a quizbowl team at all and you want to ask them to try and help you find a coach to start a team, than if your school has a team that you think is doing things wrong. I perhaps worded a bit of my post too strongly, but nonetheless, Alex's advice to players in a situation where the institutions of the team or the school are the source of the problems, which amounted to "don't do anything to actually guarantee you can play quizbowl tournaments in the very near future (pay your way and play on your own), but instead try to talk to your administrators or see if you can get the community to pressure your coach or school policies into changing, and then just hope for things to change" is in fact not going to be a strategy I think would be particularly effective, and so I made that post to drive home to players in those sorts of situations that I truly don't believe they should put many of their eggs in that basket.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charbroil »

L-Town Expatriate wrote:This is a disheartening and disingenuous statement, even if it is reality. Maybe my reading skills are off, but it sounds to me as though you're telling kids in a similar situation to not bother approaching their administration. Is that what you'll tell someone who e-mails you asking for help or advice in dealing with such a situation?
I mean, do you really expect a principal to agree when a student walks into his/her office and accuses a teacher of being incompetent at something he/she has been appointed to do for the school? Unless the coach's behavior is blatantly unethical (for example, cursing at students who miss questions), the odds of a principal entertaining these kinds of concerns, especially when they require a nuanced awareness of how do be good at a game which they probably know thing about, seems unlikely.

Incidentally, that's totally different from what you described about popularizing Quiz Bowl or earning it greater awareness, given that that's something which I doubt very many principals or coaches are going to oppose. Accusing a coach of incompetence, on the other hand, is not going to be backed by the coach (for obvious reasons) and probably won't be entertained by most principals or activities directors.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

Charbroil wrote:I mean, do you really expect a principal to agree when a student walks into his/her office and accuses a teacher of being incompetent at something he/she has been appointed to do for the school? Unless the coach's behavior is blatantly unethical (for example, cursing at students who miss questions), the odds of a principal entertaining these kinds of concerns, especially when they require a nuanced awareness of how do be good at a game which they probably know thing about, seems unlikely.

Incidentally, that's totally different from what you described about popularizing Quiz Bowl or earning it greater awareness, given that that's something which I doubt very many principals or coaches are going to oppose. Accusing a coach of incompetence, on the other hand, is not going to be backed by the coach (for obvious reasons) and probably won't be entertained by most principals or activities directors.
I'm using "awareness" to describe a team that knows about "good" quiz bowl, and in this argument presuming that the coach is, against the wishes of the players, taking the team to "bad" quiz bowl tournaments instead of "good" tournaments. There might be a different word for this; however I believe "awareness" to be applicable as I've yet to hear a figure indicating that a majority of scholar bowl coaches in the state have seen or played a bona-fide round of NAQT.

I can understand a principal or AD being reluctant to take the word of one student accusing a staff member of incompetence. The student could easily be dismissed as a rabble-rouser. If that student, however, has the support of his or her team members and some of their parents (backed with advice and treatises from the knowledgeable, helpful members of this forum, should they seek it), and collectively they've exhausted attempts to reason with the coach before approaching the administration en masse, then you might see some sort of action.

Quite likely there would be an after-school conference (or series of) where the principal or AD mediates concerns between the players and coach. This session would have the students explaining to the principal why they believe the coach is holding them back. They wouldn't have to necessarily give the administration an extensive crash-course in quiz bowl, just some pointers of "good" and "bad" formats and why the "good" formats do a better job enhancing and expanding the school's curricula and the team's competitive edge than "bad" formats the coach keeps signing the team up for. If the coach continues to dither and the principal finds the coach's rebuttals insufficient, then I would see a greater chance for a change at the top. Depending on how well-read the local weekly is, letter-writing additionally explaining the situation would bring attention to the situation from members of the community.

It would help too if students could find a supporting faculty member if it goes to mediation. Having a replacement coach lined up would allow the team to rebound from the negative impact of this internal turmoil a lot quicker, and spare the district a strenuous search which would amount to pleading a faculty member lacking Career Ladder hours to take over.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charbroil »

L-Town Expatriate wrote:I'm using "awareness" to describe a team that knows about "good" quiz bowl...
I'm the one who originally used the term awareness (to describe your efforts in obtaining media attention for Liberty's accomplishments, trophy cases, etc.), so I'm not really sure what you mean in this case.

In any case, your collective bargaining solution sounds like a good idea, but I'm skeptical that it could be done--my personal experience is that most parents and newspapers are pretty apathetic about Quiz Bowl and that most teachers and administrators are fairly reluctant to get involved in these kinds of things. I would certainly recommend that a team try this solution, but I do not have much faith that it would work in most cases, and I'm curious as to whether you have any examples which would indicate that it would.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by L-Town Expatriate »

Apologies about my not recognizing your original use of "awareness". It's easy for me to get scatterbrained. :?

Unfortunately, I do not know of any attempts to invoke mediation concerning a team wanting to take a different direction than their coach. However, with 570+ high schools in the state, I would not be surprised if such an example is floating out there. What I do know is that local weeklies are keen to publish letters from their readers, sometimes to prove to advertisers that they have readers. A letter to the editor from a team rallying for support (be it in advance of state or, if it doesn't compromise the team's position during discussions with the administration, trying to achieve a different direction) is a quick way to attract attention, even if it's fleeting.

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Re: Students playing without chaperones

Post by Charbroil »

L-Town Expatriate wrote:
Charbroil wrote:Also, in regards to your comment about safety, how is the possibility of someone being injured traveling to a Quiz Bowl tournament different from the possibility of someone being injured traveling to, say, a chess tournament or dance competition (or any other activity which doesn't require coach participation). Are you saying that no competition involving high schoolers should exist without the involvement of a coach to prevent these kinds of issues? I imagine not, so why the emphasis on Quiz Bowl as an activity which should have coaches to prevent transportation injuries?
I am not saying that coaches are a necessity; I'm saying I believe MSHSAA believes that. And as I'm only speaking about activities overseen by MSHSAA, chess is irrelevant for this discussion. (You may all exclaim a collective "Thank (insert possibly existent deity or deities of your choice)".) Dance competitions and performances fall under MSHSAA's jurisdiction. Because of the physical nature of dance competitions and sideline/center court performances, sponsors have to take first aid courses and receive approval from MSHSAA if they're not faculty.
I believe you may have misunderstood me--I was referring to non-school sponsored dance competitions which aren't regulated by MSHSAA. In any case, my point is that by approaching Quiz Bowl as an activity which has to follow MSHSAA regulations, I feel you're in essence missing the point--of course MSHSAA believes that students need to have coaches supervising them; what Charlie is saying is that MSHSAA is wrong. That's the point under debate--not what MSHSAA believes (which I think everyone is familiar with).
L-Town Expatriate wrote:
Charbroil wrote:Finally, it's worth noting that one of your own examples described how schools can avoid having to deal with the liability issue through liability waivers for the use of non-school transportation to competitions, so that really seems to be a moot point. For that matter, I know from personal experience that plenty of MSHSAA activities requiring coaches don't require school provided transportation, so compelling teams to have coaches doesn't at all mean that they'll be traveling in school transportation, making that issue irrelevant to this discussion.
Unfortunately, that becomes a circular argument when the school tells the team they can't go. By going on their own, the team wouldn't have access to the school's transportation, insurance policies covering the district bus (or van), or ability to contract litigation services. I would also have to presume the coach assumes personal responsibility, and it'd affect his or her personal policies if something went amiss.
I'm confused--what circular argument are you talking about? I'm referring to an event where the school was aware we were taking private transportation (for tennis), we signed off on the liability, and then our coach and several of our players drove us to the competition. My point is that the driving safety issue and the coaching one aren't connected, despite your argument above.

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Re: UIUC Earlybird Tournament (October 23, 2010)

Post by bt_green_warbler »

L-Town Expatriate wrote:Suppose that happens again this summer. The best team in the nation is from a school in Virginia who just doesn't happen to have an active faculty sponsor. Rather than fly into Hartsfeld-Jackson, the kids opt to drive down I-85. Somewhere around Greenville, SC, the vehicle's involved in a fatal accident and two of the kids are dead.

...

How does NAQT absolve themselves from the legal hellhole that might await them?
For the record: HSNCT teams are required to have chaperones. The following rules apply:

1. The chaperone may be a coach or a parent. (We do not require that they hold a faculty or administration post at the school.)

2. Only one chaperone is required per school. (So a single coach or parent may accompany a school sending 2 or more teams.)

3. Teams that wish to play without a chaperone may do so by petitioning us. In this case, we verify in advance of the tournament that parental permission has been obtained. (This happens for about 2-3 teams each year.)

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