International Quiz Bowl Tournaments (IQBT) will hold another NASAT tournament on June 22-23, 2019. At this point, it looks like the tournament will be in Lexington, KY, although the tournament director (Fred Morlan) has also made a post asking for host bids, so I'm not sure what the situation is there.
I am the most recent person to coordinate Ohio NASAT, and I am willing to do so again this year, but I wanted to reach out and ask whether anyone else is interested in selecting and coaching the team. I would be happy to step aside and offer my full support to any other interested party. If you are interested in being taking NASAT on, please email me (tyler DOT benedict AT mvschool DOT com) or send me a message on this forum.
One thing that I definitely think that Ohio should try to do this year is get started earlier with team selection, with a goal of having the team selected worst-case before Spring Break (that's different for every school, but let's say middle of March). I think this would help in the following ways:
1. Players know that they are committed to NASAT earlier, which means they have more time to make plans for travel and other expenses.
2. Players can incorporate NASAT preparation into their individual study routine.
3. Players can practice online as a team more regularly in the run-up to NASAT.
Having run NASAT tryouts both online and in-person (with everyone trying out together after NAQT State last year), I am in favor of running NASAT tryouts online. It simply is too difficult in our state to get every NASAT hopeful to the same site at the same time, and rather than ask candidates to make a special trip to Columbus (or some other city), I think a web-based process serves more players better. I have not in my experience noticed that running a tryout online leads to ambiguity in which players are best suited to making the team...over the sample size of the tryout, the data has painted a clear picture about who knows what.
Any feedback the community at large can offer is much appreciated!