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: 2022-08-12
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.
Rules Codification
The Rules Subcommittee is responsible for overseeing the rules codification of PNW. Rules codificiation begins with the CBQ rule book, accepted as the governing set of rules. The Rules Subcommittee may then develop a Pacific Northwest Bible Quizzing Rules document that provides adjustments to any settings allowed by the rules.
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
- Affirm theologically traditional Christian doctrine, meaning 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 quiz season
- Promote and ensure PNW Quizzing 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:
- Ensure generation of a quiz season's Club verses list(s)
- Ensure generation of a quiz season's meet and study schedule
- Assist answering questions about rules and rulings
- Recruit, train, and oversee officials
- Produce training opportunities for officials
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 quiz equipment 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
- Appoint a "master of ceremonies" (MC) for the meet
- Ensure officials are available and assigned to each room
- Host Church Coordination (to verify the following):
- Electrical support
- Wifi capability
- Housing
- Chairs
- Projection
- Sound
- Food
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:
- Invite quizzers based on:
- Year-to-date balanced-weighted individual scoring average
- Coach-confirmed memorization of at least 50% of the material at synonymous quality
- Maximum number of quizzers invited will be no greater than 20% of the district or 20 quizzers, whichever is lower
As far as team formation:
- 4-person teams will be preferred
- PNW teams 1 and 2 are "stacked"
- PNW teams 3-5 are "snaked"
Any changes to these policies will be decided by the Board of Directors and must be before District Meet 5.
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.
- The cost of District Championships is based on direct, no-markup costs to host the meet on a per-person basis.
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.