The Quizbowl Resource Center

Thank you and congratulations to all who took part in the 2017 National History Bee and Bowl National Championships! 252 teams and over 350 individuals took part in what was a fantastic weekend of competitions.

Congratulations to our National Champions!
Varsity National History Bowl: Westview High School, Portland, OR
JV National History Bowl: Beavercreek High School, Beavercreek, OH

Varsity National History Bee: Jakob Myers, Naperville North High School, Naperville, IL
JV National History Bee: Justin Young, McLean High School, McLean, VA

Varsity US History Bee: Jonathan Tran, Westview High School, Portland, OR
JV US History Bee: William Golden, James E. Taylor High School, Katy, TX

Varsity US Geography Olympiad: Kyle Yu, Westlake High School, Westlake, OH
JV US Geography Olympiad: Avi Goel, Merryhill Middle School, Milpitas, CA

Members of Team USA at 2017 International Geography Olympiad in Belgrade:
Kyle Yu, Westlake High School, Westlake, OH
AJ Manning, Bartow IB High School, Bartow, FL
Jakob Myers, Naperville North High School, Naperville, IL
Martin Rakowszczyk, Wootton High School, Rockville, MD

Varsity International Geography Bee: Jakob Myers, Naperville North High School, Naperville, IL
JV International Geography Bee: Rohil Bhinge, Frost Middle School, Fairfax, VA

Varsity Sports and Entertainment History Bee: Sam Brochin, Hunter College High School, New York, NY
JV Sports and Entertainment History Bee: William Golden, James E. Taylor High School, Katy, TX

Full stats from the weekend are still available at nhbbstats.com; full reports of Bowl final placement will be posted here and on the website when they are complete.


I would like to thank everyone who made this weekend possible. We had nearly 200 volunteer staffers and dozens of question writers devote their time and energy to this tournament, and we could not have put this event together without every one of those contributions. The hundreds of players, coaches, and parents thank you for your effort - and we thank them for their support, enthusiasm, and outstanding competition.

I have some thoughts on the tournament from the perspective of the stats room & help desk; I'll post those a bit later, after I take care of some loose ends. David also has some thoughts that he's going to relay to me soon, and I'll post those here. In the meantime, we welcome any and all feedback on this weekend's event via e-mail at [email protected]. (Feedback on the questions is also appreciated: see the post below!)

Thank you again for a great tournament!

Are the questions clear?

Question feedback is appreciated - please send any notes, critiques, comments, to me at [email protected]. If there is demand for a private subforum for discussion, I'll ask for one; last year's wasn't used much, but that might just have been a function of it being set up late.

Please note that the International Geography Bee, National History Bee, and National History Bowl sets are not yet clear for discussion; to that end, please refrain from publicly discussing any questions from the weekend. (It's too easy for someone, especially not-the-original-poster, to mistake which set a question was from, hence the total gag rule.) The last use of questions will be in early Fall 2017 after the Australia/New Zealand Championships.




The questions at this year's nationals were a labor of love for a large group of people; I'd like to thank some of them here.

The Sports and Entertainment Bee was entirely taken care of - writing, editing, running the actual event - by Robin Richards and his group. Personally, not having to worry about the Sports and Entertainment Bee event was a great help in carrying on with the rest of the weekend's sets, so I thank them for that. As I was sequestered in the stats room on Friday night and didn't moderate it, I look forward to eventually seeing those packets. :)

The US History Bee set was entirely written by Mike Cheyne, with very light editing by me; I cannot thank him enough for his incredible work on the question set. Any praise for the set belongs to Mike; any faults are my own.

The International Geography Bee set was primarily written by Corry Wang; after initially agreeing to write half the set, he ended up contributing all but the last few questions. I really enjoyed Corry's approach to the set, and I hope the players did, too.

The National History Bowl and National History Bee sets were put together by the general NHBB writing crew; over 30 writers had a question in the set, and all of their help was greatly appreciated. I'd like to specifically thank Cameron Amini, Kurtis Droge, Justin Htay, Arthur Lee, Andrew Leung, Will Overman, Sameer Rai, Rebecca Rosenthal, Jonathan Suh, Tyler Vaughan, Chris White, and Eric Xu for their help with either a cultural category or a large swath of a geographic category. In particular, Kurtis, Justin, Andrew, and Sameer contributed over 100 questions to the overall project, with Sameer's 232 questions leading the way. I contributed just the seventh most questions to this weekend's sets, after those four, Corry, and Mike; this weekend would have been nowhere near as successful as it was without their help.

The weekend existed as a collection of individual questions thanks to all the writers above; Noah Prince and Kristin Strey turned them into sets of questions. Noah's Packetizor website makes everything I do possible, and his amazing willingness to add features on the fly has improved everything about my job immensely. Kristin's improved Google spreadsheets for tracking answer lines and set progress made my docs from last year look like a 3rd grader made them and saved me from tons of self-inflicted headaches, and her help packetizing and generating the packets saved me from countless long nights.

Thank you again to all who helped! Again, please send any and all feedback to me at [email protected].

Irreligion in Bangladesh wrote:Question feedback is appreciated - please send any notes, critiques, comments, to me at [email protected]. If there is demand for a private subforum for discussion, I'll ask for one; last year's wasn't used much, but that might just have been a function of it being set up late.

Please note that the International Geography Bee, National History Bee, and National History Bowl sets are not yet clear for discussion; to that end, please refrain from publicly discussing any questions from the weekend. (It's too easy for someone, especially not-the-original-poster, to mistake which set a question was from, hence the total gag rule.) The last use of questions will be in early Fall 2017 after the Australia/New Zealand Championships.




The questions at this year's nationals were a labor of love for a large group of people; I'd like to thank some of them here.

The Sports and Entertainment Bee was entirely taken care of - writing, editing, running the actual event - by Robin Richards and his group. Personally, not having to worry about the Sports and Entertainment Bee event was a great help in carrying on with the rest of the weekend's sets, so I thank them for that. As I was sequestered in the stats room on Friday night and didn't moderate it, I look forward to eventually seeing those packets. :)

The US History Bee set was entirely written by Mike Cheyne, with very light editing by me; I cannot thank him enough for his incredible work on the question set. Any praise for the set belongs to Mike; any faults are my own.

The International Geography Bee set was primarily written by Corry Wang; after initially agreeing to write half the set, he ended up contributing all but the last few questions. I really enjoyed Corry's approach to the set, and I hope the players did, too.

The National History Bowl and National History Bee sets were put together by the general NHBB writing crew; over 30 writers had a question in the set, and all of their help was greatly appreciated. I'd like to specifically thank Cameron Amini, Kurtis Droge, Justin Htay, Arthur Lee, Andrew Leung, Will Overman, Sameer Rai, Rebecca Rosenthal, Jonathan Suh, Tyler Vaughan, Chris White, and Eric Xu for their help with either a cultural category or a large swath of a geographic category. In particular, Kurtis, Justin, Andrew, and Sameer contributed over 100 questions to the overall project, with Sameer's 232 questions leading the way. I contributed just the seventh most questions to this weekend's sets, after those four, Corry, and Mike; this weekend would have been nowhere near as successful as it was without their help.

The weekend existed as a collection of individual questions thanks to all the writers above; Noah Prince and Kristin Strey turned them into sets of questions. Noah's Packetizor website makes everything I do possible, and his amazing willingness to add features on the fly has improved everything about my job immensely. Kristin's improved Google spreadsheets for tracking answer lines and set progress made my docs from last year look like a 3rd grader made them and saved me from tons of self-inflicted headaches, and her help packetizing and generating the packets saved me from countless long nights.

Thank you again to all who helped! Again, please send any and all feedback to me at [email protected].

I know from asking around that there's fairly substantial demand for a subforum. In general, this was a great set, but I had several very minor issues with it.

Sit Room Guy wrote:I know from asking around that there's fairly substantial demand for a subforum. In general, this was a great set, but I had several very minor issues with it.

I've e-mailed the board admins to ask for a private forum; when it exists, it'll be good for discussing all of the sets from this weekend.

Thank you for the kind words; I'll agree on there being some issues, I'm pleased to hear that you think they're minor, and I look forward to hearing what you guys think. :)

I quite liked the set this year, barring specific questions that I had problems with (Once a private thread for question discussion is created I will elaborate). In addition, this year there was less waiting time and lateness (Last year I spent atleast an hour at one room waiting to start a USHB playoff round only to be moved to another one). Overall it was a great event that can only improve in the coming years.

is there a private forum set up now?

monty wrote:is there a private forum set up now?

It doesn't look like it, at least from my end.

You can check if it is set up, and eventually join it, by clicking on "User Control Panel", located near the top left of your screen, then clicking on "Usergroups", before finally scrolling down and clicking on 2017 NHBB Nationals Discussion.

The private forum for NHBB nationals weekend has now been created.

Here are the final Bowl standings.

Some parts of the S&E Bee questions are being used at the Larry Munson Memorial Trash tournament on June 24th so the packets are protected until then. You can either email or message me on the board if you want ask or mention anything.

We're already making a few tweaks for next year's event.