The 2024 High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT) will be held at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and the Hilton Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 24–26, 2024. The two hotels are connected by a short skybridge. NAQT has guest room blocks in both hotels.

The HSNCT is NAQT’s overall high school championship event. NAQT also runs a Small School National Championship Tournament for small high schools. Make sure you are looking at information for the correct tournament. (Qualified Small Schools are welcome to attend the HSNCT, even if they also attend the SSNCT!)

Waitlist registration is now open, as the field is full.

Register for the Waitlist

Date

May 24–26, 2024 (Friday–Sunday). This is Memorial Day weekend.

Participants will check in on Friday, May 24 and have the opportunity to meet each other and play scrimmage games.

The tournament’s preliminary games will take place throughout Saturday and on Sunday morning, and the playoff games will take place on Sunday afternoon and evening. Teams may arrive earlier or stay later to explore Atlanta at the discounted hotel rates negotiated by NAQT. Teams that cannot arrive on Friday night will have a chance to check in on Saturday.

Location

The tournament will be held in two hotels: the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and Hilton Atlanta. The hotels are connected by a short skybridge.

Both hotels are very tall, and games may be held on high floors. Many of the elevators provide a view into the tall atrium.

Schedule

This schedule is tentative.

All times are listed in Eastern time.

Frequently Asked Questions

NAQT has prepared answers to frequently asked questions about its national championships.

Information Desk

Starting Friday evening, NAQT will operate an Information Desk. The Information Desk should be the first destination for any questions about or issues with the tournament (other than protests, which must be lodged within the game room).

Participants may also text 213‑279‑6278 (“NAQT”) with questions if it is inconvenient for them to get to the Information Desk (standard messaging rates apply). Tournament staff will answer incoming messages as quickly as they can.

In general, lost-and-found items will be taken to the Information Desk during the tournament. We will notify owners to the extent we can identify them. At the end of the tournament, any unclaimed items will be brought to the hotel’s general lost-and-found.

Rules and Eligibility

Gameplay will follow the Official NAQT Rules. Player eligibility is governed by the High School Eligibility Rules.

Qualification

Schools qualify to send teams to the HSNCT through their performance at tournaments using NAQT questions throughout the year.

Waitlist registration is now open, as the field is full.

Register for the Waitlist

The field has historically filled. Receiving an invitation to the tournament does not guarantee a spot in the field; it merely allows your team to register for a spot if one is available. Once you have qualified, you should register as soon as you can to ensure your team a spot in the tournament. Last year, the field filled around February 21 (though some teams were promoted from the waitlist after that).

Field

The field is limited to 320 teams; these teams have registered.

Format

Fees and Payment

Waitlist registration is now open, as the field is full.

Register for the Waitlist

The registration fee is $840 per team.

The registration fee only covers participation in the tournament. It does not cover transportation, lodging, food or other expenses.

Participation Agreements

Players, coaches, and chaperones must sign a participation agreement covering expectations, media coverage, etc. All agreements must be submitted to participate@naqt.com by Friday, May 10, 2024.

For players who are under age 18, both the player and their parent/guardian must sign the agreement. For players who have reached age 18, NAQT strongly recommends and requests that the parent/guardian sign in addition to the player.

Download Agreement Form

The signature(s) on the participation agreement must be handwritten, not typed. The agreement may be submitted by sending a scan or photo to participate@naqt.com. Only the last page is required unless the participant is indicating a preference not to be recorded (in which case the page with the checkbox to indicate that preference must be included).

Chaperones

Every team must have a chaperone, subject to the following rules:

• The chaperone must be a legal adult.
• The chaperone must be reachable by text message (at a number provided to NAQT) throughout the tournament, to the maximum extent possible given availability of cellular networks.
• The chaperone must be with the team at most times during the tournament, traveling, and downtime. If the chaperone is not with the team, NAQT is not obligated to contact the chaperone in situations short of an emergency. In particular, NAQT will not contact absent chaperones regarding protests.
• The chaperone must always be near enough to the team to (physically) reach them in less than ten minutes.
• The chaperone may also be the chaperone for other teams at the tournament, thus potentially reducing their regular proximity to the team (but without nullifying any of these requirements).
• The chaperone must complete a participation agreement.
• The chaperone must be the same person for the entire tournament.

All players’ parents/guardians must affirm (via the participation agreement) that they accept their child’s team’s chaperone and the chaperone’s role of responsibility.

Teams who wish to request a variance from the chaperone policy should write to NAQT at hsnct@naqt.com well in advance of the tournament to discuss their situation.

Session Assignments

There will be two sessions of play on Saturday. Each team will be assigned to either the Morning Session or the Afternoon Session; this determines whether it plays its first seven preliminary games on Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon. The two groups will be merged for each team’s last three preliminary games on Sunday morning.

Each team may request a specific session. The first 150 session requests (based on the time the sessions are requested via the registration form, which is not the same as the time of registration itself) will be guaranteed, provided that neither session is requested by more teams than can fit in it. Session requests after the first 150 will be subject to NAQT’s efforts to balance the sessions and other considerations. However, for schools that enter multiple teams, NAQT will always honor the school’s preference as to whether those teams are assigned to the same session or spread out (unless doing so is truly impossible).

NAQT will assign and announce sessions no later than May 4.

Checking In

The primary check-in period will be in the evening on Friday, May 24. During this period NAQT will distribute information folders, answer questions, process payments, verify rosters, and take care of other administrative matters. There are late check-in periods on Saturday, but NAQT prefers that as many teams as possible check in on Friday night.

To check in, each team should send only one coach or chaperone to the check-in area. That person will be given the team’s information folder. Others should not enter the check-in area.

In past years there has been a long line just after check-in opens, so we encourage teams to keep an eye on the line and send one person to check in when the line is short. There is no need to check in immediately. In particular, it is not necessary to check in before playing scrimmage games.

Teams that don’t arrive at the hotel until after check-in closes on Friday may check in early Saturday morning or (if they are in the Afternoon Session) early Saturday afternoon. Teams that checked in on Friday do not need to check in again on Saturday.

Scrimmages

On Friday night, game rooms will be set up for teams to scrimmage against each other on questions from previous championships and/or the regular season. This scrimmaging is free and will be moderated by tournament staff.

A team does not need to have checked in to play scrimmage games.

Scrimmages will be organized by means of “scrimmage tickets”: When a team shows up to the scrimmage desk, it will be given a ticket listing a room and a time; that team should go to that room and be prepared to play at that time. The majority of tickets will be for games that start within 5 to 15 minutes, but it is possible that there could be a 30-to-45-minute wait during the busiest periods. If a team wants to play another game, it should return to the scrimmage desk to get another ticket after its game finishes.

Scrimmages are open to all players, including alternates and standby teams.

Depending on how many teams want to play scrimmage games, it may be necessary to limit how many games each team can play, but all teams who want to will be able to play at least one game.

Awards

The top teams will receive trophies (exact number to be determined based on final field size), and the players on those teams will receive medals (up to six per team).

The top individual scorers will receive All-Star awards, the top sophomores who are not All-Stars will receive Rising Star awards, and the top freshmen who are not All-Stars will receive Rising Star awards. The number of individual awards will depend on the final field size. These will be determined by points per tossup heard in the preliminary rounds among players who played for at least 120 tossups during the preliminary rounds.

Trophies for most teams (and their players) will be handed out immediately following the game in which the team is eliminated (in the game room, by the moderator). The trophies for the very top teams will be given out at the Awards Ceremony.

The All-Star and Rising Star awards will be given out at a separate ceremony on Sunday afternoon.

If a team needs to leave prior to the awards ceremony, it can go to the Information Desk to get its trophy and any individual awards earned by its members.

Consolation Games

Teams who do not qualify for the playoffs are encouraged to return at the beginning of the playoffs to play consolation games.

Teams will be texted at the end of the preliminary rounds with a link to a form by which to sign up for consolation tournaments.

Consolation games will consist of two-, three-, four-, and five-round mini-tournaments. Teams can specify their preference when signing up; they will not be assigned a longer mini-tournament than they request, though depending on supply and demand, they may be assigned a shorter one. Signing up for consolation mini-tournaments is the only way to participate in consolation games; there are no ad hoc games.

Consolation games have no effect on a team’s final rank in the tournament. They are played solely for fun. They will use the same questions as are being used in the playoffs.

Transportation

Hotel

The official hotels for the tournament are the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and the Hilton Atlanta. Rooms are available for $127 per night plus applicable taxes and fees. There are several hotels with similar names in the Atlanta area; make sure you are reserving rooms at one of the correct, downtown hotels!

The links for making reservations online will be posted here when they are available.

Book at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis Book at the Hilton Atlanta

The last day to reserve rooms at our rate is Wednesday, May 8. There is little difference between the hotels’ accommodations; teams should book in either.

Between the HSNCT and the other events scheduled to be held at the hotels, it is expected that the hotels will run out of rooms. NAQT strongly recommends that teams book their rooms as early as possible, particularly if they want quadruple-occupancy rooms (with two double beds).

We have room blocks that are calculated to cover the entire tournament, but we encourage teams to reserve their rooms as early as possible; if we end up needing more space, we would like as much time as possible to negotiate that!

As part of the contracts negotiated by NAQT, the hotels will offer complimentary guest room Internet access to tournament participants and their families. This only applies to rooms booked using the NAQT group codes.

The standard checkout time at both hotels is 11:00 a.m. Teams that are not staying Sunday night should make sure to check out of their rooms before their Sunday-morning games.

Guests with concerns about rooms on high floors should discuss that with their hotel as early as possible. The hotel may be able to assign sleeping rooms on lower floors. However, games may still be held on high floors.

Food

The hotel is connected by skyway to a food court at Peachtree Center with about two dozen restaurants offering a variety of affordable meals (sandwiches, Thai food, pizza, Chinese food, cheesesteaks, etc.). There are also restaurants in the hotel itself, and more within walking distance, that should satisfy any combination of appetite and price range.

To get to the food court…

1. Go to the Atrium Level of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis.
2. Go toward the side that Rooms A701–A708 are on (the opposite side from the Hilton Atlanta).
3. Take the walkway to Marquis Tower II and the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, just past the men’s restroom and before Room A708.
4. Turn left and cross the skybridge to the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.
5. Once inside the Hyatt’s atrium, turn left. Follow the signs to Radius Tower and Peachtree Center.
6. Cross the skybridge to Peachtree Center.
7. Explore the food court. There are more parts of it than might first be apparent!

Advocate Program

Because NAQT believes that quiz bowl is an activity for everybody, and in which all participants should feel welcome and respected, we have established the Advocate Program to make sure select tournament staff are available to hear reports about problematic behavior and comments by anyone at the tournament.

Staff wearing blue ribbons that say “Advocate” have been specifically selected to receive reports about inappropriate behavior (as opposed to run-of-the-mill questions about the quiz bowl aspects of the tournament). At least one such staff member will generally be available at the Information Desk during tournament hours; if no such person is available (e.g., due to being on a break), the other Information Desk staff can be asked to have a senior tournament official come to the Information Desk to hear the report. Additional Advocate Program staff will be available in many places around the tournament site.

Feedback about problematic behavior can, of course, always be sent to NAQT by email (advocate@naqt.com) or other channels such as the Misconduct Reporting Form, but the Advocate Program is intended to allow for in-person reporting of sensitive complaints on-site so they can be handled immediately.

Reports are confidential to the extent permitted by law and NAQT’s agreements to share critical information with other quiz bowl organizations.

Practice Material

Participants may be interested in practicing on questions from previous years to prepare for the event. All of NAQT’s past regular-season sets are available, as are the sets from previous championships.

Participants may also want to study frequency lists, Power Up study guides, and/or Thumbs Up! question anthologies. These are also available on our practice materials page.

Finally, participants may want to look at the information contained in NAQT’s free You Gotta Know articles before the tournament. These detail the most frequently asked-about question topics in a wide variety of areas.

Spectators

Spectators are welcome to attend any part of the tournament (though some areas may have limited capacity).

No registration or tickets are required for spectators.

Sightseeing

The hotel is downtown and within walking distance (10–15 minutes) of many of Atlanta’s major attractions, including the Georgia Aquarium, the High Museum, Centennial Olympic Park, the World of Coca-Cola, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and the College Football Hall of Fame.

Social Media

The official hashtag for the tournament is hsnct; please use this tag for all posts about the tournament.

Remember that question content for the championship cannot be posted online (or shared through other channels)! This means that players, coaches, spectators, and moderators should not discuss clues, answers, or even overall themes (e.g., “Lots of opera”) with people on other teams (even those from the same school).

We will post highlights from the tournament on NAQT’s social media.

Companion Mobile App

NAQT has created a companion mobile app for attendees. The app includes the tournament schedule (with the ability to set reminders for various events, on iOS), links to results, maps of the venue, help reaching the Information Desk, connections to social media, and other important documents related to the tournament.

Relationship to the SSNCT

Small Schools are eligible and welcome to attend the HSNCT (if qualified), regardless of whether they attend the Small School National Championship Tournament. The SSNCT and HSNCT will use different question sets, and a school that attends both will receive a $125 discount on its HSNCT registration fee.

Further Questions

To ask specific questions about the HSNCT, write to hsnct@naqt.com.

We look forward to answering any and all questions, no matter how expansive or trivial, in the hopes of eliminating any possible confusion or mistakes in participants’ plans. If something’s not clear, let us know!