
Pacific Northwest Bible Quizzing Standard Operating Policies
The following are the Standard Operating Policies, hereinafter referred to as SOPs, of Pacific Northwest Bible Quizzing, hereinafter referred to as PNW.
- SOPs Version: 2020-09-23
These SOPs are managed by the Board of Directors of PNW as per the PNW Bylaws.
Documentation Availability
All documentation for PNW should be made easily available to all participants in PNW by publication on a web site and a network file sharing system.
Whenever possible, these documents should be made public. The exception to this whenever there are names of quizzers listed, in which case the documents should be made private, restricted to participants in PNW.
Rules Codification
The Rules Subcommittee is responsible for overseeing the rules codification of PNW. Rules codificiation should begin with the IBQ rule book, accepted as the base set of rules. The Rules Subcommittee should then develop a Pacific Northwest Bible Quizzing Rules document that provide overrides and adjustments to the IBQ rules as deemed necessary and appropriate by the Rules Subcommittee.
Additional Documents
In addition to this SOP, there are sub-SOP documents that should be considered included as part of PNW's overall SOP. These documents are:
Quizzer Eligibility
PNW Quizzing recognizes that coaches (ministry organization Quizzing program leaders) are the best able due to their proximity to and time with Quizzing participants to determine the appropriateness of eligibility of each participant for their Quizzing teams. Therefore, head coaches are the ultimate decision-makers as to any given quizzer's eligibility for participation. However, all quizzers will be held to the standards of conduct described in Quizzer Behavioral Expectations.
Specific Roles
The following a specific, single-person roles and their responsibilities. Any responsibility of any single-person role may be delegated by that person in that role to another person or duly designated subcommittee of the Board of Directors. When such delegation occurs, the District Coordinator should be notified.
District Coordinator
The following are prerequisite requirements for candidates to fill the position of District Coordinator:
- Be considered by the Assembly to have demonstrated the requirements of an overseer from 1 Timothy 3:1-7, but there will be no requirement that candidates be male, married, or have children
- Regularly attend a theologically traditional Christian church, meaning it is in alignment with the Nicene Creed (Symbolum Nicaenum), the English translation of the Armenian version
- Have served as a quizzing official (quizmaster, answer judge, scorekeeper, or statistician) or coach in PNW for at least the previous 2 consecutive quiz seasons
- Have served on the Board of Directors for at least the previous 2 consecutive quiz seasons
- Promote and ensure the PNW is in alignment with it's mission
- Attend all quiz meets
- Be the contact person for all general PNW concerns
- Expediently respond to messages
- Act as the arbiter and ultimate appellate for any disputes
- Recruit and ensure the effective training of officials (quizmaster, answer judge, scorekeeper, or statistician)
- Handle questions about special considerations
- Arrange and communicate with host churches for the quiz season
The District Coordinator should appoint a person to be a private adviser, someone who can offer candid and independent feedback to the District Coordinator. Ideally, this person should be a former District Coordinator and not sit on the Board of Directors.
Rules Subcommittee Leader
In addition to leading the Rules Subcommittee, the Rules Subcommittee Leader shall either do or work through the subcommittee to have done the following:
- Generate a quiz season's key verse list, which should not be significantly different from last rotation
- Generate a quiz season's meet and study schedule
- Handle questions about rules and rulings
- Maintain and distribute any and all relevant rules
- Recruit, train, and oversee quizmasters and answer judges
- Produce training opportunities for scorekeepers and statisticians
In addition, the Rules Subcommittee Leader shall be the final authority on all protests at meets. If the Rules Subcommittee Leader is the quizmaster involved in the protested quiz or otherwise has a conflict of interest, the District Coordinator will be the final authority.
Meet Direction and Logistics
The District Coordinator will appoint a Meet Director, a Meet Logistics Manager, and any other ad hoc roles for each meet. The combined responsibilities for these positions are as follows:
- Pre-Meet
- Oversee the registration process and collect data for host church
- Set the number of quiz rooms and officials in each room
- Establish the quizzing schedule
- Meet Equipment and Supplies
- Ensure bibs are cleaned and repaired for each meet
- Ensure quiz equipment, such as jump seats, is operational and ready for the meet
- Ensure each quiz room has ample scoresheets, a quizzers/teams roster, and schedules
- Ensure trophies and awards are ordered and present for each meet
- Meet Operations
- Arrange devotional speakers and worship for each meet
- Appoint a "master of ceremonies" (MC) for the meet
- Ensure scorekeepers are available and assigned to a room
- Host Church Coordination (to verify the following):
- Electrical support
- Wifi capability
- Housing
- Chairs
- Projection
- Sound
- Food
Statistics Management
The District Coordinator will appoint a Head Statistician for each quiz season. The Meet Logistics Director for a given quiz season is responsible for the following:
- Devise and delegate a process for accurate collection of statistics and ensuring that process is followed
- Tabulate and verify all individual and team statistics swiftly and accurately
- Record and indefinitely maintain the collected quizzing statistics
- In the case of a team tie that is required to be broken, the statistician must notify teams and quizmasters promptly
- Report both the raw collected quizzing statistics and summary statistics via a web site and file share service
The statistician is the final authority on statistical disagreements. Scoresheets that are not initialed by a coach are considered final when they are handed to the statistician.
Special Meet Roles
The following are roles for special meets, such as Great West Invitational and Internationals, and their responsibilities.
Great West Invitational Coaches and Officials
Great West Invitational (GWI) coaches and officials are self-nominated and ratified by the Board of Directors.
Responsibilities include:
- Place their role's responsibilities above other leisure or vacation activities
- Serve as chaperon during the trip (i.e. ride in vans, stay in a room with quizzers, etc.)
In addition, coaches will handle all coaching responsibilities for their assigned team during GWI.
Internationals Coaches
The Internationals coaches are self-nominated and ratified by the Board of Directors. The responsibilities of the Internationals coaches include:
- Schedule and run Internationals practices
- Handle all coaching responsibilities during internationals
- Be the adult responsible for quizzers during Internationals
- Place coaching responsibilities above other leisure or vacation activities while at Internationals
- Only charge through Internationals quizzing related expenses to District
Special Meet Policies
The following are rules related to special or non-standard District meets.
Great West Individual and Team Specifics
The default pattern for quizzer selection to the Great West Individual (GWI) will be:
- 20 quizzers
- 5 4-person teams
- PNW teams 1 2 are "stacked"
- PNW teams 3-5 are "snaked"
Quizzers ranked 1st and 2nd are locked onto team PNW1, and for quizzers ranged 3-8, the coaches of PNW1 and PNW2 may negotiate to create the best possible 2 teams. The Board of Directors will settle any disputes.
Worship attendance at GWI is required for all quizzers unless excused by a PNW chaperone. Curfews at GWI will be consistent for all PNW quizzers.
Any changes to these policies will be decided by the Board of Directors and must be before District Meet 5.
Internationals Individual and Team Specifics
The default pattern for quizzer selection to the Internationals will be:
- 1 team
- 5 quizzers on that team
The Board of Directors may make the decision to taking more than 1 team to Internationals. If so:
- Team selection for team 2 will be the same as Team 1
- At least 4 quizzers have to meet the requirement for Team 2 to even be a possibility
- At no time will PNW1 be composed of anything besides the top 5 qualified, attending quizzers
A week after District Meet 5, the Board of Director will communicate a strong intention to either stay with one Internationals team or to take a second team. This decision will be contingent upon transportation and financial viability and head coach availability.
Quizzers must declare their intent to attend Internationals by District Meet 5. That decision can be contingent upon final cost to each quizzer.
There is a quoting requirement for all quizzers planning to attend Internationals:
- The quizzer must quote forwards, in order, but is not required to recite the references before each verse
- The quizzer must quote at least 80% of the verses in the material word-perfect without any help except for the prompt "again" at the end of the verse
- The listener will record which verses were not word-perfect
- The quizzer will be required to start from the beginning if 80% accuracy is not achieved by the end
- Quizzers must complete their quoting between District Meet 5 and District Championships
If 5 quizzers do not meet the quoting requirement in a given quiz year, the the remaining members of the team will comprise of the top-placing individuals who did not meet the requirement.
The head coach has latitude for setting practice requirements. Any dispute shall be decided by the Board of Directors.
Fees
The following are the fees associated with quiz meet attendance:
- There is a fee of $20 per quizzer per meet for every regular District Meet and District Championships.
- There is a fee of $100 per quizzer to attend the Great West Invitational.
- There is a fee of $150 per quizzer to attend Internationals.
For clarification:
- There are no team fees.
- There are no fees for the Scramble Meet.
In addition:
- All fees are waived for ministries in their first year of PNW Quizzing participation.
Host Facility Reimbursement
Every facility that hosts a quiz meet will receive:
- $100 for hosting
- +$50 for providing lunch
- +$50 for providing housing
Weather Minimums
There may arise situations where the weather forecast predicts conditions unsafe for travel to, from, or about the meet location.
General Principles: We don't want to cancel any meet, but we have an obligation to cancel whenever the safe outcome of travel is ever in doubt. There isn't an easy way to decide this because there isn't a uniform standard weather minimum for safe travel shared across all drivers, vehicles, and locations. A meet shouldn't be canceled if most teams can safely travel to and from the meet; however, if any coach believes safe travel is in doubt due to weather and declines travel to a meet that isn't canceled, their teams should not be statistically penalized.
The following are the weather-related meet policies:
- A coach may, by citing what they feel is unsafe forecast weather conditions, decline to commute their teams to any meet. Such a decision must be made prior to the start of the meet. The coach needs to contact the District Coordinator as soon as possible following the decision. Given this case, the quizzers and teams from that ministry will have their averages calculated with the missing meet removed from the sum denominator.
- If more than a third of ministries decide to decline participation in a meet due to weather, the Board will cancel the meet.
- The Board will cancel the meet if at the meet location or along any common roadway where a majority of ministries will likely commute the following weather minimums are expected to be exceeded:
- Ice on the roadway.
- Snow accumulation of 2".
- Freezing rain.
- Visibility below 1 statue mile except for morning fog.
- Flooding.
- Electrical power loss at the meet location with no backup power capability.
- If the Board cancels a meet, all teams will have their averages calculated with the missing meet removed from the sum denominator.