Last Year’s Results

The National History Bee and Bowl is pleased to officially announce the date of its second National Championships on Saturday, April 28 and Sunday April 29, 2012 in greater Washington, DC and that the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Crystal City, Arlington, VA will be the official host hotel. The National History Bowl National Championships (i.e. the team event) will be held in their entirety on Saturday the 28th. The National History Bee National Championships will be held in their entirety on Sunday the 29th.

Qualification
Both the Bee and the Bowl will feature Varsity (open to all students, no age restrictions) and Junior Varsity (10th grade and under only) Divisions; teams qualify through finishing with a winning record in their division or by winning at least one playoff match at any of our projected 75-85 qualifying tournaments around the USA and abroad. Individuals qualify for the Bee through finishing in the top 1/3 of the draw or finishing among the top 10 if there are fewer than 21 students in a division (Varsity or JV). These counts are inclusive of # of teams and teams that are tied. As we are featuring three separate question sets, students and teams have up to three chances to qualify – there is no difference for qualifying purposes as to whether a team qualifies off of an A set, B set, or C set tournament. There are no wild cards this year; all teams must qualify as per the specifications here.

Tournament Format
Teams will be guaranteed ten rounds of preliminary matches this year, five of which are guaranteed to be at a a site of historic or cultural importance in Washington, DC including the Smithsonian museums, the International Spy Museum, National Museum of Crime and Punishment, Dumbarton House, Anderson House, the Embassies of Slovenia, Uruguay, Malawi, and Nigeria (more to come), the Newseum, the Phillips Collection, the Woodrow Wilson House, the Middle East Insitute, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and more. Teams will be grouped into a seeded bracket of six teams in the morning and play a full round robin. Teams will either play at a site that falls under the heading of Greater DuPont Circle or Greater Mall/Capitol Hill. Teams will then play their afternoon matches based on where they finished in their morning games. There will be two levels of rebracketing in the afternoon (meaning either that teams ranked 1, 2, and 3 in their division in the morning will advance to the top bracket in the afternoon while teams ranked 4-6 would play in the lower bracket.)
In the afternoon, teams will play at different sites. Most likely, teams who played at a historic or cultural site in the morning will play at the hotel in the afternoon and vice versa, but this is not set in stone. There will be a minimum of a 90 minute lunch break, and teams will not have to move more than 5 miles at most from their morning to their afternoon site during this time.
For the Varsity division, the top 32 teams (based first on finish in their afternoon division, then by afternoon points – overall rounds do not matter except as tiebreaks, first by record, then points) will then qualify for the playoffs in the evening. These matches will then be held at the hotel (see below). In the playoffs, teams will be seeded based on results from the afternoon’s matches from 1-32 in the Varsity and 1-16 in the JV, and then we will hold single elimination playoffs.
We will award a small school Varsity and small school JV champion this year. Small schools however will not be in a separate draw. If one small school (defined as a non-magnet, non-selective public school with 800 or fewer students in 9-12 or 600 in 10-12) reaches a level of the competition farther than any other (e.g. only one small school is found among the 32 Varsity playoff teams or if only one small school reaches the final then that school will be the automatic small school champion. However, if two small schools each are in the same final level, then they will compete for the title, even if one has a higher order of finish. If more than two schools are at the same level (e.g. say three small schools make the 32 Varsity playoff teams, but none make the round of 16, then the top two based on points will play for the title. If one finishes at a higher level than any other, but two (or more) finish at the next level down, then the top two of these based on points in most recent round in which both played will play for the small school 2nd place title. If there is a tie on points, the next tiebreaker is record in the afternoon rounds, followed by points in the afternoon rounds.

In the Bee on Sunday, we will have 6 prelim rounds with 40 questions each divided as follows:
Rd 1 (8:15-8:40) World History to 1491
Rd 2 (8:55-9:20) US (incl. colonial) History to 1815
Rd 3 (9:35-10:00) World History 1492-1932
Rd 4 (10:15-10:40) US History 1816-1932
Rd 5 (10:55-11:20) World History 1933-2012
Rd 6 (11:35-12:00) US History 1933-2012

Lunch and Consolation Bee Finals: 12:00-12:30
Mt Vernon Qualifiers announced at 12:35
Leave for Mt Vernon at 12:45
Arrive at Mt Vernon at 1:15
Welcome Message at 1:25
Final rounds begin at 1:40, ends at 3:40; awards ceremony concludes by 3:50; return to hotel/National Airport by 4:30 (an earlier bus will arrive by 4pm)

Currently, it is projected that the top 20 Varsity and top 10 JV students will be bused out to Mount Vernon for the final rounds in the afternoon, the format of which will be announced at a later date. In contrast with last year, all Bee rounds on Sunday morning will be held at the host hotel. Also, this will also allow us to offer a “Consolation Bee” on Sunday morning which will feature 4 rounds, begin around 9:00, and will be open solely to those students who did not qualify at a qualifying tournament for the National History Bee National Finals. This will cost $50 per student.

Questions
All questions used at our National Championships will be provided by High School Academic Pyramid Questions (HSAPQ) and edited by HSAPQ in conjunction with The National History Bee and Bowl. This year’s tossups will be somewhat shorter than last year’s. Also, tossups in the Junior Varsity division at all levels, tossups in the afternoon rounds of the Bowl for the lower level(s) and tossups used in the Consolation Bee will be slightly shorter and easier as well.

Prizes
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will be providing monetary prizes for the top teams and students. The amounts in question will be posted as soon as we know; we are hoping for roughly $10,000 for all competitions combined. Other prizes, including the History Bowls and Bee Cups, plaques, book prizes, MVP awards, sportsmanship awards, and possibly other in-kind prizes and scholarships will be awarded as well.

Hotel
The official hotel for The 2012 National History Bee and Bowl National Championships is the Crystal Gateway Marriott http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/wasgw-crystal-gateway-marriott/ in Crystal City, Arlington, VA. We have secured a rate of $127 per night plus tax for quad occupancy. This rate is valid from Wednesday April 25 through Tuesday May 1 for teams who wish to extend their stay. The hotel is connected by an underground walkway to a Metro station (i.e. the subway), which is about 3 minutes away. From the hotel to the center of DC it is only 3-4 stops. Between the hotel and the subway stop is an underground shopping mall with numerous food options for all price ranges. In contrast with last year, we will have access to 61 suites for scrimmage and side event matches on Friday night and for the Bee preliminary matches and the Consolation Bee on Sunday. We will also have access to a 1000 seat ballroom for an opening meeting on Friday evening and playoff matches for the Varsity on Saturday night. We also have six other conference rooms at our disposal for the quarterfinal and semifinal matches on Saturday, along with the Small School championships. To avoid elevator traffic jams on Sunday, Bee matches will likely have slightly staggered start times, though with six elevators, we should be okay. Internet access is free in the lobby and the competition rooms; in the bedrooms it is extra, but between smart phones and complimentary internet in the lobby, this shouldn’t be a major concern. Parking costs about $20 a night, but the hotel is also located only about half a mile from Reagan National Airport, and there is a free airport shuttle as well. We recommend you fly into Reagan National if you plan on flying. Teams who fly will not need to rent cars to get around. We have secured 450 bedrooms at the hotel; hopefully this will suffice; if not we can likely secure overflow space at the same rate at the nearby Crystal City Marriott across the street (note this is a different hotel from the Crystal Gateway, which is where the tournament is). As the tournament coincides with the Cherry Blossom festival, as the Crystal Gateway Marriott is the closest of all Crystal City hotels to the Metro, and as numerous NHBB events will take place there, we highly recommend you take advantage of the rate we have negotiated, which is very competitive for an upscale hotel in greater DC at this time of year (including tax, it’s about $27 cheaper per room per night than our rate at the main hotel last year). Finally, the hotel is located on the way to Mount Vernon, which will effectively give us 30 more minutes of competition/later start time than what we had last year, where the Bee rounds also necessitated going to a separate site in the morning.

Friday Night Events
For all Friday events at Nationals, including The National Sports History Bee, The National Entertainment History Bee, the Jeopardy Champions Panel Discussion, the Opening Ceremonies and more, please see here: http://friday.historybowl.com/

Costs
The Base Fee is $450 for the Bowl and $80 for the Bee. Discounts are applied for having hosted a regional qualifying tournament, bringing a buzzer system, and having a reader. For all information regarding fees and discounts, please see the Bowl registration page here: http://www.historybowl.com/nationals-registration/ and the Bee registration page here: http://www.historybee.com/nationals-registration/
The tournament is currently limited to 200 teams; combined Varsity and Junior Varsity. We will likely be able to expand this if need be; with 70 projected qualifying tournaments we may need to.

Staff Wanted!
If you are interested in helping to staff the NHBB Nationals, please email director at historybowl dot com. We will try to honor reading requests as much as we can (i.e. whether you would prefer to read at an embassy, museum, mansion, etc.). Staff members are given a complimentary polo shirt and staff gift. They also have the opportunity to play in the Staff Bee late on Friday night. We can reimburse travel expenses on a case by case basis ( up to $150 per person in most cases, but this depends on our needs), and also help you find people to carpool with if applicable. Accommodations for staff are provided on Friday and Saturday night, along with a $15 food allowance and thousands of homemade chocolate chip cookies (that’s for everyone, not per person. sorry.) Also, note that different permanent NHBB staff members will be responsible for coordinating various aspects of Nationals.

Questions? Comments?
If you have suggestions or comments, please post in this thread. If it’s a question that is specific to your team or does not relate to NHBB Nationals, email us. We’re working hard to bring you a great National Championships. Let us know your thoughts and we’ll take them into consideration. Good luck in qualifying and hope to see you and your team at NHBB Nationals in April!