2023 AMTA Tournament Quality Analysis

2023 AMTA Tournament Quality Analysis
The Mock Editorial
Written by: Publius & Phocion


Intro
Everyone hates going to a bad tournament. Rounds start late and run long, closing ceremonies take forever to get through, and for some reason the host got the world's smallest classroom to hold the round in. That's even worse when it's an AMTA tournament, where the stakes are higher and every ballot is the difference between your season ending in triumph or ending in February. Thus brings the creation of the tournament eval form. Not that AMTA or tournament hosts actually look at them but they do exist. So while it might not matter to any sane person, I figured it was time to give everyone who says "The judges screwed us" some numbers to back it up. So here are the top tournaments, as rated by the competitors.

Methodology
The methodology was pretty simple for this one: I averaged all of the tournament evaluation responses by location and category and then sorted them from highest to lowest. I took out any test responses by AMTA Reps and went ahead and tried my best to remove duplicate responses from teams. I may have missed a few (there were over 200 duplicates that I found in total). Special shoutout to Mississippi College who had over 11 self-submissions to their own regional, and a record 20 duplicates for the entire field of the Jackson Regional.
You can play around with the data yourself in the attached files—I left many of the categories out of this post for brevity. You can also look back at the individual comments and responses of any team that responded to this.
Overall, there were 44 (I separated the Nationals Divisions) AMTA tournaments that we had data for this year, representing almost every single team in AMTA at least once. Take a look and see where your tournaments ended up.

This link is the data with the fancy edits.
Removed per request of AMTA

This link is the raw data that AMTA collects, including any duplicates and test responses.
Removed per request of AMTA


Judging
Mean: 8.017

1. Wheaton, IL Regional: 9.088
2. Memphis, TN NCT: Pohlmann Division: 8.729
3. Spartanburg, SC Regional: 8.615
4. Waco, TX Regional: 8.500
5. Washington, D.C. Regional: 8.452



Tournament Quality Comparision
Mean: 8.577

1. Wheaton, IL Regional: 9.764705882
2. Greenville, SC ORCS: 9.636363636
3. Owings Mills, MD Regional: 9.363636364
4. Columbia, SC Regional: 9.352941176
5. Williamsburg, VA Regional: 9.3


Trial Rooms:
Mean: 8.003
1. Wheaton, IL Regional: 9.941176471
2. Owings Mills, MD Regional: 9.727272727
3. Geneva, IL ORCS: 9.583333333
4. Columbus, OH Regional: 9.300
5. Springfield, MO Regional: 9.25


Hotels
Mean:8.248
1. Spartanburg, SC Regional: 9.583333333
2. Evanston, IL Regional: 9.055555556
3. New Rochelle, NY ORCS: 9
4. East Lansing, MI Regional: 9
5. Dayton, OH Regional: 8.955


Closing/Awards:
Mean:8.808
1. Wheaton, IL Regional: 9.764705882
2. Springfield, MO Regional: 9.75
3. Owings Mills, MD Regional: 9.545454545
4. Greenville, SC ORCS: 9.545454545
5. Dayton, OH Regional: 9.545

For the scores above, Wheaton takes our #1 seed in almost all of our metrics, especially when compared to its regional peers. Of the five categories we’re counting for this post (Judging, Tournament Quality, Trial Rooms, Hotels, and Closings) Wheaton takes the crown on four of them. That might be surprising until you realize they have AMTA Tab Room Royalty in Diane Michalak on their coaching staff. At this point, we’re pretty sure Diane is having the Wheaton Mock team drop and give her 50 pushups if the tournament isn’t picture-perfect.

In the form itself, competitors rate judging for each round of the tournament. Spoiler Alert, it doesn’t actually make that much of a difference. The range between the lowest-rated round (Round 2) and the highest-rated round (Round 4) is a little over 0.2 units. Competitors are mostly consistent with their judging scores, regardless of what round it is. For the purposes of this form, I just averaged all of the 4 rounds together, to make an “All Rounds Judging” score.

There are some actual surprises in the data though. If you thought the community consensus was that courtrooms are better than classrooms, you may need to reconsider. Both the second and fifth-rated trial rooms were actually classrooms. In general, it seems like courthouse tournaments are slowly becoming less and less common. In 2018, 7/8 ORCS were held in courtrooms. Now we’re down to three.

I also included an “All Scores” column—it’s just an average of all of the 19 different metrics that the tournament is graded on, for one grand total score. Although that’s probably statistically dubious as a measure of grading the best tournament…..
Anyway, I’m using that column to declare a Best/Worst Regional and ORCS.

Best Regional: Wheaton, IL: 9.42

Worst Regional (and lowest rated tournament): Houston, TX Regional: 7.90

Best ORCS: Greenville, SC ORCS: 9.07

Worst ORCS: Cincinnati, OH ORCS: 8.38



This will probably be the first of a series of posts on this account, each written by someone different in the community. Although not super related to this first post, I expect more of the future ones to be more like opinion pieces about someone or something in the mock realm. If you’re interested in writing about any topics for this account, have any questions/comments about the post, or want to bounce ideas off each other, email themockeditorial@gmail.com