Midseason Poll, 2017-18

[deserto]

Good evening,

I'm preparing to send out the midseason high school quizbowl poll. If you do not receive an email from me this evening but would like to submit a ballot, shoot me a PM or email (g.brisontrezise [at] gmail). The submission deadline will be Thursday, Jan. 4 at 1 a.m. EST. I welcome ballots from coaches, players, tournament directors, and other knowledgeable parties. As I have previously, I will post all ballots publicly after compiling and sharing the ultimate ranking. As I did for the preseason poll, I will subtract from each team's vote total the lowest and highest rankings it receives. I do not plan to conduct a small-school-specific poll presently. Identifying teams both eligible and worthy of consideration for such a poll is challenging, but if you're familiar with the circuit and interested in conducting a poll either independently or jointly, drop me a line.

Cheers,

Gabe

[deserto]

RESULTS:

TOP 25:

1. Thomas Jefferson A (Alexandria, Va.) — 518 POINTS (17*)
2. James E. Taylor (Katy, Texas) — 464
3. Canyon Crest (San Diego, Calif.) — 452 (2)
4. Wayzata (Plymouth, Minn.) — 443 (2)
5. Hunter (New York, N.Y.) — 434 (1)
6. Detroit Catholic Central (Novi, Mich.) — 426 (1)
7. Richard Montgomery (Rockville, Md.) — 381
8. LASA (Austin, Texas) — 310
9. Rockford Auburn (Rockford, Ill.) — 288
10. Beavercreek (Beavercreek, Ohio) — 284
11. Stevenson (Lincolnshire, Ill.) — 279
12. Montgomery Blair (Silver Spring, Md.) — 265
13. Lehigh Valley (Bethlehem, Pa.) — 259
14. Chattahoochee (Johns Creek, Ga.) — 242
15. Crystal Springs Uplands (Hillsborough, Calif.) — 239
16. Ladue (St. Louis, Mo.) — 194
17. Miami Valley (Dayton, Ohio) — 187
18. Dublin Scioto (Dublin, Ohio) — 159
19. St. John's (Houston, Texas) — 145
20. Early College at Guilford (Greensboro, N.C.) — 117
21. IMSA (Aurora, Ill.) — 115
22. Thomas Jefferson B (Alexandria, Va.) — 91
23. Homestead (Cupertino, Calif.) — 70
24. Battle Ground (Franklin, Tenn.) — 59
25. High Tech (Lincroft, N.J.) — 44

Also receiving votes: MICDS (Mo.) 37, Fremd (Ill.) 35, duPont Manual (Ky.) 30, Northview (Ga.) 24, Downingtown STEM (Pa.) 17, Arcadia (Calif.) 16, James W. Robinson (Va.) 16, Ed W. Clark (Nev.) 13, Harker (Calif.) 12, Hoover (Ala.) 9, Centennial (Md.) 8, Lexington (Mass.) 6, Strake Jesuit (Texas) 3, Darien (Conn.) 2, Westview (Calif.) 2, Henderson County (Ky.) 1

* first-place votes

Thanks to our 23 voters: Michael Borecki (Bowdoin College), Vincent Fan (sophomore, Phillips Academy), Brad Fischer (director of question production, National History Bee and Bowl), Christopher Gismondi (coach, Detroit Catholic Central), Alistair Gray (senior, Homestead), John John Groger (sophomore, Miami Valley), Troy Harris (coach, Plymouth High School [N.H.]), Rishik Hombal (senior, Hoover), Montagu James (senior, Princeton [N.J.]), Kevin Kodama (junior, Oak Park-River Forest [Ill.]), Jack Lewis (senior, Battle Ground), Bradley McLain (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Ben Miller (senior, Montgomery Blair), Hari Parameswaran (junior, Beavercreek), Raj Paul (junior, Ladue), Michael Powers (junior, Louisiana [Mo.]), Catherine Qian (senior, Maggie Walker [Va.]), Gregory Schweers (coach, Cistercian [Texas]), Eric Seifter and John Heslin (coaches, Centennial), Vishwa Shanmugan (senior, Downingtown STEM), Daniel Wang (senior, Canyon Crest), Koh Yamakawa (Columbia University), and Kevin Yu (senior, Westview)

[deserto]

NOTES:

-- As I did for the preseason poll, I dropped the highest and lowest rankings from each team's vote total. Those selections appear in red on the ballot spreadsheet.

-- Each ballot represents the studied opinions of the person who submitted it, not the institution with which he or she is affiliated. Affiliations are provided for identification purposes only.

-- The number of voters who partook in this poll — 23 — appears to be a record. In the interest of quality control, if the pre-nats poll attracts as many voters, I'll likely drop the two highest and lowest rankings.

-- Eight of nine U.S. Census Bureau divisions are represented among those who submitted ballots. Paging anyone from the Mountain West...

-- I encourage voters to offer explanations / considerations below, and invite those who did not submit ballots to weigh in with their thoughts. That said, please refrain from harsh criticism of any individual ballot; voters are volunteers making good-faith attempts to distinguish between ultra-talented teams.

-- Readers should assume ballots reflect voter positions ahead of any tournaments played yesterday.

-- If you notice any math (or other) errors, please let me know. You may PM me or email me at g.brisontrezise AT gmail.

[Karansebes Schnapps Vendor]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12FkJYKVFxVTbW_UMkczxAIRYFJH88pieTNcKxolQggo/edit?usp=sharing

This doc has all of my rationale for voting. If you have any further questions, feel free to shoot me a pm!

[dnlwng]

I actually weighted EFT/Penn Bowl/hard college things less heavily than regular difficulty stuff, partly because the PPB adjustments get kind of wonky when there's only a handful of high school teams playing a set, and also partly because I feel like the national tournaments (especially HSNCT) are actually closer in difficulty to an IS set than something like Penn Bowl.

[Iamteehee]

Hunter A is definitely underrated here. They just got 26.82 PPB on IS-172 without Daniel Ma.
http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... i_results/

[troyharris]

One note-had I been submitting today as opposed to last week, Hunter would have been in my top five after seeing what they did yesterday at KPAQT.

[troyharris]

Big thank you to Gabe for taking this on and compiling the results.

[cat]

Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. Edited: They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) but I agree with Daniel, ppbs from college sets aren't totally reliable.

I'm surprised people didn't put Hunter in their top 5 since it seemed clear they would have beat DCC A at that one tournament had Chloe not left. They also seem to be consistently improving, so I'd say Hunter is once again a contender for HSNCT at least.

Comparatively low ranking for Rockford Auburn is based partially on a lack of stats, partially on their ppb at WAO II, and partially on their nats placements from last year.

[troyharris]

Assuming that one tournament you are talking about was HFT?

[Karansebes Schnapps Vendor]

I actually weighted EFT/Penn Bowl/hard college things less heavily than regular difficulty stuff, partly because the PPB adjustments get kind of wonky when there's only a handful of high school teams playing a set, and also partly because I feel like the national tournaments (especially HSNCT) are actually closer in difficulty to an IS set than something like Penn Bowl.

That's a fair point, though I only really used college difficulty stuff as a top 4 tiebreaker(as I felt that they were within the zone where ppb differences are almost impactless on reg difficulty)

[cat]

Assuming that one tournament you are talking about was HFT?

Yep, that one.

[deserto]

Hunter A is definitely underrated here. They just got 26.82 PPB on IS-172 without Daniel Ma.
http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... i_results/

To clarify: most voters (all but Mr. Yamakawa) submitted their ballots before KPAQT, and thus were not privy to this statline.

[An Economic Ignoramus]

Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) and good but not as impressive PPB at WAO II

Uhhh I don't think Taylor played WAO II

[Quinctilius Varus]

Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) and good but not as impressive PPB at WAO II

Uhhh I don't think Taylor played WAO II

Jakob is right. You might be thinking of EFT, which we played over Skype shorthanded and with another player unaffiliated with Taylor.

EDIT: Oops, just scrolled up to see you already edited your initial post.

[cat]

Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) and good but not as impressive PPB at WAO II

Uhhh I don't think Taylor played WAO II

Jakob is right. You might be thinking of EFT, which we played over Skype shorthanded and with another player unaffiliated with Taylor.

EDIT: Oops, just scrolled up to see you already edited your initial post.

Yep, Jakob is very right, sorry about that.