2019-2020 MS Postseason Poll

Dormant threads from the middle school section are preserved here.
Locked
User avatar
CPiGuy
Auron
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:19 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa

2019-2020 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

MSNCT did not happen (and if it did it would have happened by now). The 2019-2020 middle school quizbowl season is therefore effectively over.

I am therefore going to open this year's postseason player and team poll. The poll is intended to be a ranking for the 2019-2020 season; this is not a predictive poll for next year.

To vote, please send your ballots to me at [email protected] by 11:59pm on Friday, May 29th. There is no need to specify "A" or "B" unless you vote for a school's B team. If you put a school twice and do not specify A or B, I will assume this is an error and ask you to correct it. You may vote in the team poll, the player poll, or both. If you vote in both, there is no need to send me two emails.

General guidelines (mostly borrowed from last year's iteration)

Anyone (coaches, players, parents, interested observers) is welcome to submit a ballot, and ballots will not be weighted.

Vote for exactly fifteen (15) teams or players in each ballot, ranked from 1st through 15th. (The team you rank first will get 15 points, the team in second will get 14, etc.) If you send me a ballot with more than fifteen entries, I will count only the first fifteen. If you send me a ballot with fewer than fifteen entries, I will ask you to re-submit it with enough entries.

Please put "MS Quizbowl Poll" in the subject line in some fashion so I can easily search for your ballot. If you don't do this, you risk me missing your ballot.

I will name all the voters but will not specify who voted for whom -- if you want to submit your ballot anonymously please tell me.

Please be reasonable with your ballots -- if you do something like rank your own team first despite the fact that you put up 10 PPB on an MS set, I will probably ask you to re-submit your ballot.

There is no need to specify "A" or "B" unless you vote for a school's B team. If you put a school twice and do not specify A or B, I will assume this is an error and ask you to correct it.

For the team poll, please specify what state each of the teams you are voting for is from (both for my ease in cross-checking with stats, and in case there are two Smith Middle Schools that receive votes).

There is no need to conform to a standard name -- for example, I'll interpret "Hunter", "Hunter College", or "Hunter College High School" as the school who won MSNCT last year -- as long as it is unambiguous who you're voting for. Please do not use abbreviations like "HCHS" or "OMS" -- there are many schools with those abbreviations, and if it's not clear who any of your votes are for I'll ask you to clarify before I accept your ballot.

For the player poll, please specify the affiliation and state for each of the players you are voting for. Also please use their first and last name.

If you want to revise your ballot, just email me your new ballot. (Don't do something like "I want to switch my 3rd and 4th picks". Just rewrite the whole thing, please.)

Eligibility to be voted for in the poll:

Schools that fielded at least one team in a middle school all-subject quizbowl tournament this school year are eligible, even if they did not play MSNCT. Schools that played exclusively (for example) NHBB events, or schools that did not attend any tournaments as a team but one of their players attended IPNCT, are not eligible. Homeschool collectives and other non-traditional schools are eligible as long as they fit the other requirements.

Players who were in 8th grade or below for this school year and played at least one all-subject quizbowl tournament are eligible, even if they did not play MSNCT or IPNCT, or even any tournaments at the middle school level. Players who exclusively played (for example) NHBB events are not eligible.

Running list of voters:

------
Eamin Ahmed
Soren Gjesfjeld
Aadit Juneja
Rohan Kher
Sybil Ponnambalam
Rajiv Pujara
Brian O'Flanagan
Conor Thompson
Charles Young

I'll be making a "for your consideration" post soon, and encourage others to do the same -- especially with the lack of a nationals, it's good to have lots of information and for people to plug teams/players they think are good.
Last edited by CPiGuy on Wed May 27, 2020 3:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
User avatar
CPiGuy
Auron
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:19 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa

Re: 2019-2020 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

A reminder that you have 5 days to vote (assuming I can do math)!

Here are some opinions and shoutouts that may help you.

Arin Parsa (Challenger) and Rohan Ganeshan (Quest) are two of the best, if not the two best, middle school players ever. They both account for the vast majority of the scoring on teams that are among the best in the country, and they both have a consistent record of strong performances at tournaments. They should be 1 and 2 on your poll in some order.

Charles Young (Barrington Station) would be the best MS player most years, but Arin and Rohan exist. He has very deep coverage in the humanities and excellent generalism; his performance at Illinois tournaments somewhat undersells him because Rohan Ganeshan has basically the same strengths as him and is slightly better. He accounts for the majority of the scoring on Barrington Station, a very good team with good teammates. He should be third on your poll in my opinion.

Anurag Sodhi (Burleigh Manor), Elyas Nuh (Churchill), and Soren Gjesfjeld (Bloomington) are both very good generalists with a strong specialty category as well who account for a majority of the scoring on very strong teams. You should rank them quite highly.

Eamin Ahmed is the leading scorer on a very strong Hunter team. He is very good at quizbowl, and probably the best player in the country who is not far-and-away the dominant player on their team.

Rohan Kher (Barrington Station) does not score a ton of points because he has to sit next to Charles. He has very deep history knowledge and is a very good player who should receive votes.

Epsi Bhattacharyya (North Gwinnett), Aditya Shivaswamy (St. Mark's), Neil Sethi (Liberty) and Nikky Nandapati (Greenhill) are also strong team-leading generalists, though in my opinion they're slightly behind the Anurag/Elyas/Soren tier. They know a lot of things and should receive votes.

Other good players who you should consider voting for are Caroline Cox (Midtown Classical), Shreyas Singh (Uni Lab), Conner Feng (Oak Valley), Sahas Goli (Hopkins), Aarush Santoshi (Tenafly), Tate Osborne (Monrovia), Olin Bose (Briarcliff), and several others I will surely omit.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
User avatar
curiousmind34
Kimahri
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2020 11:19 am
Location: Darien, CT

Re: 2019-2020 MS Postseason Poll

Post by curiousmind34 »

When/Where will the results of the poll be posted?
Rajiv Pujara
Middlesex MS '21
Darien '25
User avatar
CPiGuy
Auron
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:19 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa

Re: 2019-2020 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

Here are the results of the poll. Nine ballots were cast in each poll. Thanks to the following 10 voters:

Eamin Ahmed (players only)
Soren Gjesfjeld
Aadit Juneja
Rohan Kher
Brian O'Flanagan (teams only)
Sybil Ponnambalam
Jeff Price
Rajiv Pujara
Conor Thompson
Charles Young

Players:

#1 Rohan Ganeshan (Quest Academy, IL) [134, highest 1, lowest 2]
#2 Arin Parsa (Challenger-Almaden, CA) [125, highest 1, lowest 3]
#3 Charles Young (Barrington Station, IL) [118, highest 2, lowest 4]
#4 Anurag Sodhi (Burleigh Manor, MD) [102, highest 3, lowest 7]
#5 Elyas Nuh (Churchill, CA) [93, highest 4, lowest 7]
#6 Soren Gjesfjeld (Bloomington, IL) [92, highest 4, lowest 9]
#7 Eamin Ahmed (Hunter, NY) [72, highest 5, lowest 15]
#8 Nikky Nandapati (Greenhill, TX) [67, highest 5, lowest 15]
#9 Aditya Shivaswamy (St. Mark's, TX) [55, highest 8, lowest 11]
#10 Rohan Kher (Barrington Station, IL) [34, highest 8, ranked on 8 ballots]
#11 Epsi Bhattacharyya (North Gwinnett, GA) [31, highest 9, ranked on 6 ballots]
#12 Neil Sethi (Liberty, AL) [28, highest 8, ranked on 6 ballots]
#13 Sohum Sukhatankar (St. Mark's, TX) [26, highest 7, ranked on 5 ballots]
#14 Shreyas Singh (Uni Lab, IL) [21, highest 9, ranked on 5 ballots]
#15 Caroline Cox (Midtown Classical, FL) [16, highest 10, ranked on 5 ballots]

Also receiving votes:
Conner Feng (Oak Valley, CA) [13]
Olin Bose (Briarcliff, NJ) [8]
Aarush Santoshi (Tenafly, NJ) [7]
Kevin Chung (Seoul Foreign, SK) [7]
Aarush Zarabi (Bret Harte, CA) [6]
Aryan Pathak (Springfield Franklin, IL) [5]
John Augustyn (Notre Dame, IL) [5]
Tate Osborne (Monrovia, AL) [4]
Keerthana Krishnan (Beckendorff, TX) [4]
Brady Seaburg (Quest Academy, IL) [3]
Kaushik Gollamudi (Barrington Station, IL) [2]
Evan Schleck (Hunter, NY) [2]

Teams:

#1 Barrington Station (IL) [134, highest 1, lowest 2]
#2 Quest Academy (IL) [125, highest 1, lowest 3]
#3 Challenger-Almaden (CA) [118, highest 2, lowest 4]
#4 Hunter A (NY) [102, highest 3, lowest 6]
#5 St. Mark's A (TX) [87, highest 4, lowest 8]
#6 Greenhill (TX) [74, highest 5, lowest 9]
#7 Churchill A (CA) [73, highest 4, lowest 10]
#7 Middlesex A (CT) [73, highest 5, lowest 12]
#9 Burleigh Manor (MD) [62, highest 5, ranked on 8 ballots]
#10 Smith (NC) [49, highest 4, lowest 14]
#11 Bloomington (IL) [44, highest 4, ranked on 8 ballots]
#12 Longfellow (VA) [43, highest 7, ranked on 8 ballots]
#13 North Gwinnett (GA) [21, highest 11, ranked on 5 ballots]
#14 Springfield Franklin (IL) [16, highest 10, ranked on 4 ballots]
#15 Seoul Foreign (SK) [14, highest 8, ranked on 3 ballots]

Also receiving votes:
Oak Valley (CA) [9]
Tenafly (NJ) [7]
Hopkins (CA) [6]
Winburn (KY) [4]
Liberty (AL) [4]
Chamblee (GA) [3]
Northmont (OH) [3]
Hunter B (NY) [3]
St. Mark's B (TX) [2]
Churchill B (CA) [2]
Middlesex B (CT) [1]
University Lab (IL) [1]

Congratulations to all the players and teams who were selected on an outstanding season; we're all looking forward to seeing what you continue to do in quizbowl!
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
quiz4life
Lulu
Posts: 77
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:05 pm
Location: Seoul Foreign School

Re: 2019-2020 MS Postseason Poll

Post by quiz4life »

Conor,

Thank you for doing this poll. Thanks to all those who participated and congratulations to all the teams and players who had votes. I wish I had know about this much earlier, I would have loved to spread the word to vote to others. But bravo! I think the overall standings look spot on.

I am proud of my now former team for doing so well in only their second year of existence. Though the team graduated three of their four players, I think the team will be as good if not better for this 20-21 academic year. The team has a new transfer student, who was a star player on the 12th ranked team. 😊 Plus they keep their star science player Alex Kil.

Sincerely,
Michael Harvey
Academic Quiz Coach
Concordia International School Shanghai
Shanghai, China


Formerly Coach at
Seoul Foreign School 2018-2020
Community School of Naples, FL. 2015-2018
Singapore American School 2012-2015
Shanghai American School 2003-2005
Locked