2019 Trash Player Poll

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The Favourite
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2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by The Favourite »

It's been awhile since I've seen anyone post a trash player poll, so I decided it would be a fun exercise for me to run.

A google form for the poll can be found here: https://forms.gle/2zdBfr3Di5hcMFPS6

Since trash tournaments are usually open and more regional than national, the form only asks for regional responses, but there is also a spot for you to attempt a national ranking of players.

The polls in the form are:

Top 5 overall in your region
Top 3 TV players in your region
Top 3 Music players in your region
Top 3 Sports players in your region
Top 3 Movies players in your region
Top 3 Games players in your region
Top 3 Trash Lit players in your region

Please talk about people from your region in the thread so people can get a feel for how good people from other regions really are. I am curious about what people from other regions are good at, since that 's super hard to see through stats.

This poll will close on Tuesday, May 14. If I get enough responses, I may make another separate poll for us to find the best players in each subject/a broader national overall poll.
Tracey Hickman
Rock Creek 12
Redlands 14
Central Oklahoma 16
Coach, Murray State College (OK)
Former Coach, Coalgate Schools (OK)
Curriculum Director, Oklahoma Quizbowl Camps
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The Favourite
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by The Favourite »

I'll talk about a few people in my region that really stand out.

Finn Bender is really, really good at games, trash lit, internet stuff and can pull a little bit of everything else. Finn is probably the best player in this region across the trash distro. He is usually near the top of the field in scoring, and puts up solid power numbers in his subjects regardless of difficulty.

Zach Arnberger is the best Movies player in the Great Plains region, and it's not particularly close. Also a very scary sports player.

Dustin Austin can get a lot of buzzes across a lot of categories. Dustin can carry a team to a decent finish at trash tournaments, but has often played on stronger teams where his contributions can't always be seen in stats. Really, really good at trash bonuses, and always makes the team he is on better.

Casey Stafford is really good at trash (see his IPNCT performance). I'm not really sure if he has a specialty, but he can get buzzes across the canon.

Sean Phillips. I have not actually gotten a chance to play against Sean, but word of mouth is that he is really good, and stats bear that out. He tells me that he would beat Dustin to any tennis tossup, and someone should definitely write a tennis packet so I can see that match-up.
Tracey Hickman
Rock Creek 12
Redlands 14
Central Oklahoma 16
Coach, Murray State College (OK)
Former Coach, Coalgate Schools (OK)
Curriculum Director, Oklahoma Quizbowl Camps
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Cheynem
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Cheynem »

I'm not sure if they are truly the best, but I would say in my region, if I want to get questions on these topics, I turn to these folks:

MUSIC: Kenji Shimizu is absolutely lockdown at music. At both CO Trashes I played with him, he would routinely get 3-4 music questions a round.

SPORTS: Tejas Raje is absolutely lockdown at sports. At both CO Trashes I played with him, he would routinely get 3-4 sports questions a round. However, I am better than him at baseball because nobody cares about baseball.

VIDEO GAMES: There's a number of top video game players out there. If Micah Hodosh is still in the Midwest, he was/is fantastic. Rob Carson is really scary at video game questions, especially if you start dropping what I'll call "Internet goop clues."

MOVIES: I think I'll say Matt Lafer--he and I won the FILM side event and he's consistently one of the best film players I've seen. I'm better at trashier films (especially old Hollywood), but he's way way better at foreign and academic. Will Nediger, if he were still in the Midwest, could also challenge here. Tim Morrison perhaps, as well. John Lawrence and Sam Bailey are good at film, but I think tend to skew older.

TV: I'd like to think I am the best player in the region at older TV. I haven't watched TV since 1995 though, so this tends to be a problem.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
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Good Goblin Housekeeping
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

This seems like a difficult exercise since there's like a hs level trashtournament a year and maybe a total of 50 tus in the regular season
Andrew Wang
Illinois 2016
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The Favourite
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by The Favourite »

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 1:15 pm This seems like a difficult exercise since there's like a hs level trashtournament a year and maybe a total of 50 tus in the regular season
This is fair. At the same time, I feel like there are a lot of people that play all the miscellaneous trash tournaments and side events that don't get talked about. More than anything, I wanted this project to serve as a talking point about people from regions that they don't normally see. For example, I know about people in the Midwest (And Canada because they take their trash seriously and post a ton of polls), but know near nothing about the Southeastern or Western players.
Tracey Hickman
Rock Creek 12
Redlands 14
Central Oklahoma 16
Coach, Murray State College (OK)
Former Coach, Coalgate Schools (OK)
Curriculum Director, Oklahoma Quizbowl Camps
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Auks Ran Ova
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 1:15 pm This seems like a difficult exercise since there's like a hs level trashtournament a year and maybe a total of 50 tus in the regular season
There's also been a more difficult trash tournament every year since 2016 (either CO Trash or Super ACRONYM), though maybe that's less helpful for regional rankings since they're generally more centralized.
Rob Carson
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Santa Claus
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Santa Claus »

I'll just leave this here: ACRONYM

Juliet is a top tier trash player, currently based in the Mid-Atlantic but frequently in the Northeast. Other highlights include getting literally all but one trash tossups at 2018 DI SCT, almost every trash tossup at 2018 DI ICT, and getting third in scoring at SHAWARMA II in a field with John Lawrence and Mike Sorice as they played a set full of movies they were old enough to have watched. She should be in your vote for top overall, movies, and music, and in contention for TV as well.
Last edited by Santa Claus on Wed Apr 24, 2019 1:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
Kevin Wang
Arcadia High School 2015
Amherst College 2019

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Auger recombination
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Auger recombination »

In the last year or so of writing about fantasy sports, Tracey Hickman has gone from being just a good sports player to powering every sports question bar 6 at ACRONYM, with the majority of those powers in the first line.
Finn Bender
Edmond Memorial '15
OU '19
Colorado '21
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kiestosuccess
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by kiestosuccess »

Based only on the ACRONYM stats from Macalester's site (http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/56 ... /combined/), I would make a case for myself as a top sports player, especially in baseball and basketball. Paul Flaminio is probably the best generalist, to the point where I don't know what categories he locks down because he buzzed on what felt like most of the distribution. Rob Carson is a great generalist, and murdered Golbez. Andrew Hart is a good sports player as well, and gets shadowed by good teammates.

Rob and others could probably give more complete analysis since I've only played Acronym in the last 5 years. I'll toot my own horn and say I led my championship team in scoring at the main site of Acronym in 2014, of which no stats exist online, so take that for what it's worth.
Ian Kies
Saint Thomas Academy '14
University of Wisconsin-Madison '17 (winter)

"I'm the Trash Man! I come out, I throw trash all over the- all over the ring! And then I start eatin' garbage! And then I pick up the trash can, and I bash the guy on the head."

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Charm Bison
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Charm Bison »

Idk I think I'm pretty good
Sam Brochin
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StabbedCat
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by StabbedCat »

I mean, I will be putting in a vote for UK players, but trash tournaments are kinda rare in the first place so most of your experience with people comes from playing in practice. This means you are much more familiar with the strengths of people at your institution, hence why my vote likely favours Cambridge peoples

Also, a lot of the trash heavy hitters are no longer students, and with every trash tournament here being an open, the people who dominate scoreboards are past their student days (sometimes by a great many number of years). People like Tom de Bock, Oliver Sweetenham, and Daoud Jackson would have done incredibly well on this in years gone by, but they have committed the sin of being old and graduating somewhere in the past couple of years.

Never convinced anyone to play a video games packet and trash lit hardly comes up, so those have been left blank.
Theo Howe
University of Cambridge '19
Self-proclaimed trash god, middling to bad on all other subjects
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The Favourite
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by The Favourite »

Sorry for the delayed response. Voters from Five regions turned in ballots (Upper Midwest, Lower Midwest, Southeast, Northeast, UK). I will post the top five vote-getters for regional "Best overall" and the top from each of the categories that votes were cast. Thanks everyone for voting.

Top 5

Upper Midwest
1- Rob Carson
2- Tejas Raje
3- Mike Cheyne
4- Colby Burnett
5- Dylan Minarik

Lower Midwest
1- Tracey Hickman
2- Zach Arnberger
3- Finn Bender
4- Andrew Holland
5- Dustin Austin

Southeast
1- Mickey Sizemore
2- Chris Borglum
3- Taylor Harvey
4- Harley Andrew
5- Peter Torres

Northeast
1- Juliet Mayer
2- Max Shatan
3- Ben
4- Sameen
5- Alec

UK
1- Lillian Crawford
2- Joseph Krol
3- Frances Clark-Murray
4- Evan Lynch
5- Theo Howe

TV
Upper Midwest- Mike Cheyne
Lower Midwest- Andrew Holland
Southeast- Peter Torres
Northeast- Juliet Mayer
UK- Frances Clark-Murray

Movies
Upper Midwest- Mike Cheyne
Lower Midwest- Zach Arnberger
Southeast- Taylor Harvey & Sean Platzer
Northeast- Juliet Mayer
UK- Lillian Crawford

Sports
Upper Midwest- Tejas Raje
Lower Midwest- Tracey Hickman
Southeast- Jacob Murphy & Zach Foster
Northeast- Sameen
UK- Frances Clark-Murray

Music
Upper Midwest- Dylan Minarik
Lower Midwest- Tracey Hickman
Southeast- Taylor Harvey
Northeast- Juliet Mayer
UK- Joseph Krol

Games
Upper Midwest- Rob Carson
Lower Midwest- Finn Bender
Southeast- Harley Andrew & Zach Foster
Northeast- Kevin Wang

Trash Lit
Upper Midwest- Rob Carson
Lower Midwest- Finn Bender & Tracey Hickman
Southeast- Mickey Sizemore
Tracey Hickman
Rock Creek 12
Redlands 14
Central Oklahoma 16
Coach, Murray State College (OK)
Former Coach, Coalgate Schools (OK)
Curriculum Director, Oklahoma Quizbowl Camps
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theMoMA
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by theMoMA »

It looks like the regions you listed are not defined and arguably overlapping. It also seems like at least some of these polls got very few responses (i.e. I can't imagine there were multiple votes for "Ben," no surname, in the Northeast). I'm not sure it makes sense even to release these results if there's very little participation, perhaps because the regional methodology is confusing or divides things up too narrowly.
Andrew Hart
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Santa Claus
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Re: 2019 Trash Player Poll

Post by Santa Claus »

naah this is definitely 100% legitimate
Kevin Wang
Arcadia High School 2015
Amherst College 2019

2018 PACE NSC Champion
2019 PACE NSC Champion
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