Since I'm not at OSU (or Columbus) anymore, this post should be read as my own opinions and not that of the OSUAT, especially since I have had zero contact with them about this topic.
First, was there really nobody able to host FKT in the northeast? I found it surprising when I first saw the field list, since the Youngstown mirror is closer to Solon and Copley, for example. Granted, we didn't have this problem the past two years, but I'm personally curious as to whether this was OSU reaching out to the northeast or the other way around (i.e. Copley, Solon, et.al deciding this mirror would be better for them). Given there are also two Northmont teams in the field as well despite the Sidney mirror, it seems likely it's the latter, so in that case you can't blame the OSUAT entirely for it.
Also, I'm not quite sure why the staffing restraint is necessarily bad. In the past few years our number of available staffers can fluctuate wildly depending on everyone's schedules (so essentially not everyone in the club is able to staff every tournament), which also makes it kinda hard to figure out months in advance. With (historically) larger tournaments such as the winter tournament and NAQT States, we've also reached out to non-OSU people and coaches to help with staffing, too, and it definitely helps. I can't assume whether they did or not this year just by looking at the numbers, though. I'm also not sure why them not asking you to come help staff (this time, at least) is necessarily bad, since I'm pretty sure Brittany knew about your Southern Ohio mirror to begin with, making asking you to staff FKT at OSU not viable to begin with. If they're aiming to get more (hopefully local) teams to attend, expanding the field at this point is definitely the only option, as I would hate to have to turn down schools with established teams that really want to play on just that basis.
Another point - 18 teams is actually larger than the two previous FKTs OSU hosted - each of them only had 10 teams. It's also larger than most collegiate tournaments I remember hosting, too, so I'm not sure why size is necessarily a problem. Of course, we could have done a better job of reaching out to Columbus-area teams in the past and expanded the field off of that, but that's a different matter.
Thomas Moore wrote:In some ways, the OSUAT has gotten better recently, but there were still low-blow moves like scheduling college tournaments against nearby high school tournaments and advertising for high school teams to come (like the fall tournament last year). And I think that role needs to be made clear, if your club is namely interested in doing college quiz bowl and just wants to host high school for the $$$ to do college quiz bowl, that's fine... but that's something we deserve to know (especially me in this case if I'm free-balling this set to you since it's FKT).
Since I personally never heard these criticisms when I was around, I'm wondering what specifically you're describing with some of them. I've been aware of scheduling conflicts between high school/collegiate teams and am definitely guilty of lightly advertising to high school teams about it by posting on the forums, but I haven't seen any real problems from it so far. Last year, ACF Fall (which we needed the money from hosting) was on the same day as Tippecanoe's tournament, but the only high school team that showed up was Northmont (with Sam), which didn't have business playing an A-set anyway. MUT conflicted with a trash tournament I was well aware of (and made so in my post) before making a post about it, but I don't see it being a terrible thing if someone would prefer to attend an academic tournament over a trash one (as DCC and Dublin Scioto did). (It also conflicted with a tournament Greg Bossick hosted, but I didn't know about it until a week after I posted.) The bigger issue from this is how it difficult it is at times to schedule high school tournaments as an active collegiate team at a large public university - there's the desire to play tournaments that are often on specific weekends (ex. ACF/NAQT events), in addition to things like home football games that can make it a hassle for attending teams in particular.
Also, if we ran any tournament poorly in the past few years (since 2011, since I wasn't really involved in organizing them until after my freshman year), I would have liked to know why so it could be improved in the future!
Still, I believe you're right in that I'm not sure how much outreach the current OSUAT is doing or is willing to do with high school quizbowl and clarification on that would help, but I don't think it should be automatically assumed that they don't care, just from looking at the field for this and keeping in mind what FKT was meant to do. Maybe they were just unsuccessful at reaching out to Westland and Dublin Coffman, who knows! I certainly don't.
I think some communication over these kinds of things before mirrors are hosted would be a good idea to do in the future so everyone's on the same page.
EDIT: clarified stuff