Copied and pasted from the General Announcements because of reference:
Only posting this in General Announcements because I don't know how often people peruse the bottom of the front page.
The 2016-2017 season is coming to a close, so lets take a look at the Central Ohio picture as it relates to quiz bowl and its growth.
In general, it appears that Columbus and the areas surrounding are experiencing more quiz bowl activity than it did a few years ago; certainly more than five years ago. It does appear though, however, that the growth is a bit slower than expected; additionally, it seems to be that the growth comes is spots and spurts (instead of five new schools playing 2-3 events a year for more than a year or two, there's like 15 schools playing 1-2 events a year but then will stop.)
I'll break down the state of quiz bowl for each of the counties that border Franklin County, as well as Franklin County. I'll have eight breakdowns written; you may be reading this and thinking "well only six counties touch Franklin, so 6 + 1 =/=8," because there is a massive amount of schooling systems and secondary schools in Franklin, I'm going to specifically write a breakdown for Franklin County's public schools and Franklin County's private schools. For the districts that have more than one high school, I'll write a general comment on the district and delve into each specific high school.
Delaware County
Big Walnut: Newcomer onto the Central Ohio quizbowl scene, they attended events at I believe Chillicothe and Olentangy Liberty this past season. It's a little small to be thought of as a "big school", but its also way too big to be a small school. It would be good to see them continue attending tournaments. Looks like they're joining Northeast In the Know League next year.
Buckeye Valley: They hadn't been to any events up until a few years ago, namely the events at Olentangy Liberty. However, I have not heard much about them lately. I wonder if they have the same coach that they did when they attended tournaments.
Delaware Christian: Not active. This is a really small school that graduates less than thirty students a year. I don't have that much to say about them right here, but... I do have some insight on what could possibly be done to get schools in their particular situation interested in playing quizbowl.
Delaware Hayes: They used to go to iterations of the Tippecanoe Academic Challenge five or so years ago. As far as I know, they have a club that participates in local league.
Olentangy (Local Schools): Olentangy HS (referred to on 'In the Know' as "The Olentangy") has attended OAC Regionals several times in the recent few years, including 2016 and 2017 iterations. I really don't know 'what the deal is' with their program, because they certainly do have the talent and the resources to be a consistently good team. They had attended one of the last few iterations of the BRAVE Falcon tournament at Bowling Green (RIP), but I'm led to believe the school's attendance at those events were under a previous coach. Olentangy Orange, as is the case with Olentangy HS, plays in a local league that runs on Questions Unlimited products. They also do 'In the Know', so they're not a completely dead program. Olentangy Liberty is obviously the school that plays the most quizbowl out of anyone in their district, so not a whole lot to touch there. The interesting thing with the Olentangy district is that Olentangy Berlin High School (aka 'the new high school') opens in 2018. I'm not entirely sure what effect, if any, that will have on quiz bowl (might be unlikely to see kids that play middle school QB at Hyatts to get redistricted to Berlin, because Hyatts is far west of U.S. 23, whereas Berlin will be to the east of U.S. 23. I guess it may be possible, though, for some Hyatts students to get redistricted to Olentangy HS?) And... as a side note... one of the Olentangy middle schools (it wasn't Hyatts nor Liberty, I think it was Berkshire... or Shanahan?) hosted the Columbus regional final for Middle School History Bee earlier in 2017.
In sum: county that has a lot of quiz bowl potential that is growing, but some schools that definitely should try some Saturday events appear reluctant to do so.
Fairfield County
Amanda-Clearcreek: they only do MSL. Their program has been cut recently, brought back but only for it to possibly get cut again in the future (out of budget concerns.) Small, really spread out district where sports and FFA are two things valued highly in the community. Would like to see AC play more, but I also realize that them being able to support a team at all may be a challenge at times.
Berne Union: pretty small school, does have a good academic reputation among the area public schools. Only does MSL, and I think they're one of the schools that will probably have a coaching change once every three or four years. Like Amanda, sports and FFA rule the roost.
Bloom-Carroll: of all the rural Fairfield County schools, BC would probably the most likely to start getting in on Saturday events. They have brand-new facilities across the district, has good academics, is experiencing a little bit of growth, and they make a point of what they can offer from an extracurricular perspective; some other schools may not really much in the way of resources (or drive) to get into competitive extracurriculars that aren't sports, but I think BC does. The really interesting thing with this district is they're open-enrollment, so where I think they have an incentive to get into circuit quizbowl and make it an active program is the fact they can use it as a reputation boost on the academics side. Right now they only do MSL, but have done OAC Regionals before.
Fairfield Christian: of all the schools in MSL that I had contact info for when I was sending out information for OAC Fall, that wasn't Fisher, FCA was the only one to write back to me. They were interested in my event, if not for the fact several of their players were also running in the Cross-Country state tournament that day. The indication I sort of get is they want to play OAC, or a format that allows for teamwork. They played at the Golden Shamrock often, and are at St. Charles sometimes. Really an enjoyable program to read for when I'm doing MSL. They've played OAC Regionals multiple times, making it to round four or five (with one loss carried into those games) often.
Fairfield Union: in MSL, and they did play in the Golden Shamrock a couple times when I was in high school. However, I'm pretty sure FU is one of the schools where the coaching duties have changed hands more than I change my signature on here (I could be wrong here, but I'm sure it has changed at least twice since I was a senior in high school.) Another really rural, spread out district. I wouldn't necessarily write them off as 'oh, they'll never play quizbowl'... but if my survival depended on me correctly picking a Fairfield County school that would start playing Saturday events once or twice a year, I would probably not pick them.
Fisher: they play quizbowl.
Lancaster: they used to be a very active program back in the day; they are sorely missed, truly. Fisher's now-defunct Golden Shamrock tournament was called such because of the tournament's origins, which date back to LHS' involvement. Shamrock, obviously, stems from Fisher being the Fighting Irish; Golden stems from Lancaster being the Golden Gales (yes, like the winds.) I may have a detail slightly incorrect here, but my understanding was Lancaster hosted the original event in 1994(?) with Stevenson helping run it (I'm sure Mike is reading this and twiddling his thumbs, pondering how he'll roast me for getting this story, which has been explained to me at least five times, wrong.).....ANYWAYS, last summer I managed to track down the coach that took them to a few NAQT events in 08 and 09 (he stopped doing the advising role two or three years ago.) By all accounts, a nice gentleman that was informative, but pretty much what I understood was the program deviated away from anything quizbowl related and instead turned into the 'debate team (???).' When he left teaching at Lancaster, the program got passed down to another gentleman; supposedly a nice guy and a great, well-liked teacher, but I'm not sure how interested he'd be in pursuing quizbowl on the weekends seeing as how he's the head varsity baseball coach (which, of course, would take up a lot of his time.) They have been on 'In the Know' and I believe Brain Game in the last two years, though. When I talked to the gentleman that took Lancaster to events, the inference I made was that the traditional academic activities at LHS fell apart around the time he was coaching, so things like debate and mock trial got absorbed, along with a quizbowl, into a single club that picks and chooses what things sound like fun. As far as I know, that's what the current coach inherited.
Liberty Union: Tristan Mooney, who is on Ohio State's academic team, went to Liberty Union. The only way I expect Liberty Union to consider Saturday quizbowl is if Tristan can make an appeal to the coach to come to an event at Ohio State. Outside of that, really not expecting much.
Millersport: does MSL, does Licking County ESC. They used to go to Golden Shamrock, had a few good teams back when the MSL had New Albany in it, and I believe they used to go to St. Charles. But it's just a really small school district that is in a very tough financial situation, I would not expect them to play Saturday quiz bowl.
Pickerington: North does attend a couple tossup/bonus events a year, maybe an OAC event also. Central does not have a team. I do know that, when it comes to Central, they supposedly have a setup where the non-STEM related extracurricular activities - like Lancaster - are put into just one big 'enrichment' club or whatever. The former coach from Lancaster said they'd play Pick Central in debate/whatever the activity was they did.
In sum, county with a lot of different high schools - but so few willing to play Saturday events. The loss of Lancaster from quiz bowl is unfortunate, and it'd be great to see them back.
Franklin public, Franklin private, and Licking coming up next. Will try and get to Madison, Pickaway, and Union later.