2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread - Results posted?

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
Locked
User avatar
chartong
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:52 pm

2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread - Results posted?

Post by chartong »

Hello all,

Since Groger Ranks is not doing any postseason polls like they usually do, and since I've seen quite a lot of interest in a poll despite this, I've decided to take matters into my own hands and run both a postseason poll (for teams), and a poll for players.

The polls will work pretty much exactly the same way as the previous polls run by Groger Ranks. For the player poll, respondents will rank their top 30 individuals with justifications for each ranking (if you choose, you may instead provide some summary justifications in a box at the end, but I will not be accepting rankings without sufficient justifications). Respondents will also be asked to rank their top 10 individuals in the categories of literature, science, history, fine arts, and RMPSS (religion, mythology, philosophy and social science), as well as their top 10 freshmen and sophomores. As with the previous year's player poll, you do not have to fill out every poll; you may select which ones to fill out depending on which ones you feel qualified to respond to.

For the overall team poll, respondents will be asked to rank their top 30 teams and provide justifications for each spot. Like with the player poll, you will be given the option to fill out a "summary justifications" box at the end of the form.

Some last notes about the polls:
- I reserve the right to throw out any ballots that are obvious trolls/do not provide sufficient justifications for their rankings (e.g saying "stats" or "high power count" alone is not acceptable - I encourage more in depth explanations!)
- The poll won't be anonymous, but if you feel you need to have your response kept anonymous for any specific reason you can email me at cole dot hartung at kinkaid dot org.
-The top freshman and sophomore will not be receiving a plaque like the Groger Polls - sorry!
-You don't have to be in high school to respond to the poll - anyone who feels they're qualified to talk about the HS circuit may respond.

Finally, I recognize that there is significant criticism against postseason player polls/team polls, since the results are often heavily skewed towards online posters/friends. That's why I encourage you to take the rankings with a grain of salt, and also why I HEAVILY encourage you to respond to this thread with a "shill" post about one of your teammates or anyone who you think deserves it; we've all worked hard this year and we all deserve recognition!

The player poll can be found here, and the overall team poll can be found here. The polls will close on July 16th. Happy ranking.
Last edited by chartong on Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Cole Hartung
kinkaid '24

"You ruined quiz bowl for millions of innocent players" - Arthur Gayden

Suetonius states that Titus, upon realizing he had brought no benefit to anyone during a whole day, remarked "Friends, I have lost a day".
User avatar
jsrubel
Lulu
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Sep 19, 2019 9:31 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by jsrubel »

Hi there

I’m not gonna make a huge post but I figured I should shout out some people who either may go underrepresented in these polls or should undoubtedly be at the top of your ballots.

Gokulan Anand (Literature): Even though we didn’t play many tournaments this year, Gokulan was still one of the best literature players in the country (imo only second to Justin Chen) and most of his powers at HSNCT were on literature, so it’s even more impressive that he powered that much with the lack of literature in the naqt distribution. If there was a subcategory poll I’d shill him for vfa, but his 2 p/g mainly on literature should certainly put him at the top of that poll.

Amogh Kulkarni (Overall, History, Literature, Science,RMPSS) and Ryan Sun (Overall, History, Fine Arts): Both of the two main scorers on Arcadia should 100% be at the top of polls in almost every category. Arcadia had far and away the highest Groger score in the country and had the second highest powers and ppb at hsnct despite not being strong in geo and current events, and in my opinion they would have been the favorite for PACE if they had gone. Amogh and Ryan are both best at history yet still put up 69 and 34 powers playing with each other at hsnct, and as seen from events last year (MCMT) Ryan when solo nearly as good as Amogh when not playing in his shadow. They both for sure belong in top 30 individuals, and I would say Amogh is top 5 in history and rmpss and top 10 in literature and science. Ryan definitely is top 10 history and maybe even top 5 fine arts (he did read the entirety of the AP art history textbook so).

Justin Chen(Overall, Literature) and Pratyush Jaishanker (Overall, Science): This one is relatively self explanatory as everyone saw them both last year and this year having insanely high power numbers at both nationals, with both of them being top scorers on top 5 teams at nationals. Justin is by far the best literature player in the country and has had over 2 powers a game on college sets, and Prat held his own against maybe the best player in the country this year in their best category (Aadi Karthik). These two have been the best duo alongside Amogh and Ryan this year and should certainly be in many categories on the poll.
Josh Rubel
Greenhill School '22
Williams College '26


Yeah! E minor! Alright! Yeah!
shivaboy123
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 13, 2021 8:37 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by shivaboy123 »

There's really only two organisms that I want to shout out here:

Darryl Wang - In my opinion, Darryl Wang is the best science player this year. There's many reasons for this: The first is that he scales like crazy. His ARCADIA performance (10/8/5) shows that he's able to power more than half of college-regs-level sci consistently. He also tops science scoring at pretty much every other tournament he's at. His 33 powers at HSNCT are freaky. Even in subcategories of science that he's supposedly "weak" in, he's better at them than pretty much every science player. The second reason is that he has a really good intuition. Having played against Darryl, his ability to parse really obscure/ difficult-to-connect clues at game speed is crazy. He has this freaky ability to decrease the possible answer space to like, two or three possible answers based on the most random aspects of a question that you wouldn't ever even think to consider. Some call it "frauding", but I disagree; I call it "built different". If you have Darryl less than 5th in your science poll, you're tripping :aaa: :aaa: :aaa: .

Sinecio Morales- This guy is CRAZY at fine arts, AMAZING at science, FREAKY at rmpss, and has the ability to consistently out-buzz you on questions in basically every other category as well. He was the 3rd highest scorer in a WORKSHOP mirror that had 23 players, and he was the 9th highest scorer in the 2022 PACE NSC that had 312 players. Sinecio is a god and he belongs on your top overall players poll.

I'll do an obligatory shill for myself, Shiva Tegulla. I'm good at science, but I am pretty bad at scaling. I got 1st in science in DART II (19/7/7) and probably somewhere near the top in Delta Burke science (15/1/2), but the latter is mostly due to the fact that I was facing much easier competition than the other science players in the tournament. I also got 3rd in science on the same previously mentioned ARCADIA mirror (2/15/4), but clearly did much worse than Connor Blake and the aforementioned Darryl :lol: .

Most importantly, however, I would like to shoutout every person that has played Quizbowl this year. Keep playing and improving :party:

Lastly, here are the links to the category stats for some of the tournaments I mentioned in this post. I recommend that you look at these ones, as well as the category stats for all the other tournaments this season, as there are players in every category and niche that deserve recognition.

(DART II catstats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =374269923
ARCADIA Catstats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1361094945 )
Last edited by shivaboy123 on Tue Jun 14, 2022 4:01 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Shiva Tegulla
UCF
oriley
Wakka
Posts: 109
Joined: Thu Oct 01, 2020 10:31 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by oriley »

Hi! I’ll talk about some random Minnesota things and come back later if someone’s not been talked about that I know about. Yell at me if I mess something up.

edit: I forgot about Rohan Kher somehow. This error has been fixed.
Allie Hoffert is, in my estimation, the fifth or sixth-best sophomore in the country. If I forgot someone, please let me know. Rohan Ganeshan, Charles Young, Cole Hartung, and Rohan Kher are better, and Rachel Ezrielev beats Allie out if you value specialism over generalism. RAFT (2nd) and HSNCT (12th) are her most recent tournaments.

Regarding specialist polls, Allie should be ranked in RMPSS. She was the best myth player in the country by the end of last year—she won ONCT myth despite playing with two myth players, for example—and she is again (6/3/1 in 10 games of NEWT, 30 ppb on HSNCT, etc). She’s the best religion player in Minnesota, and although she’s inconsistent at PSS, I can’t think of many that do both RM and PSS at an elite level. Vedul from Kinkaid springs to mind, but no one else does at the moment.

As for the parts of Minnesota I have been reliably informed I cannot recruit people from, Wayzata has literature players you should rank again. Nathan Wu should be ranked in the literature poll, and although he might just miss out, Anuk Dias is really good as well. Nathan is the best generalist in Minnesota, and should be ranked in the top 30 generalists.

Samir Sarma from Eden Prairie had a rocky HSNCT, but if he does well at NASAT, rank him near the back of the top 30 generalists. He’s great at regs—hopefully he scales well. Samir mains science, which is kind of bizarre to see from a Minnesotan generalist, but it’s been a weird year.

Cool! Now, someone put this thread’s posts through five different languages on Google Translate, come back to English, and see what it spits out :)
Last edited by oriley on Sat Jul 09, 2022 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Owen Riley
Inver Hills ’23
Northfield coach
byogaman
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2020 9:43 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by byogaman »

Quiz Bowl………
Sophomores:
1. Rohan Ganeshan, Buffalo Grove - 83/69/27 on HSNCT, ‘nuff said, should be T3 overall imho
2. Cole Hartung, Kinkaid - 35 powers on a very player heavy PACE third place team is incredibly impressive, t5 history as well, easily
3. Charles Young, Barrington - Their HSNCT (26/46/15) and PACE stats (27/53) are great on a team where they are supported by a very strong Rohan Kher
4. Rohan Kher, Barrington - In terms of powers, he and Charles go neck to neck. His numbers are incredibly impressive — HSNCT (24/28/10) and PACE (25/27).

The rest (I didn’t know how to rank):
Soren Gjesfjeld, Bloomington - Dropped 57 powers on IS-206 and also got 17 powers on this year’s SCT-D2 showing good results, albeit on a weak team.
Lucca Ruggieri, Great Valley - From what I’ve seen with his HSNCT stats (21/20/4), he’s good on a very good team, though his PACE stats aren’t as good
byogaman - pretty mid, fell off after last year
Ethan Bosita, St. Mark’s - Insane at history, getting a statline of 36/13/10 on a very balanced SSNCT-winning team as a second scorer. He should definitely be on this poll.
Nikky Nandipati should be towards the bottom of your freshman poll, as his HSNCT stats are a huge drop from his online stats.
Please tell me if I’m missing any more

Texas:
Vedul Palavajjhala (got it right first try), Kinkaid - alternating between first scorer and ceding that position to Connor Blake, Vedul is good at quiz bowl (HSNCT - 32/79/30, SCT-D2 - 27/45/9) and should be on your overall poll
Connor Blake, Kinkaid - HSNCT (42/40/18) and PACE (41/22 !!). The Tyger himself led Kinkaid to 4th at HSNCT and 3rd at PACE. He should definitely be on your sci polls and overall polls.
Ali Hamzeh - Ali Hamzeh. Freshman poll.

Kile Stenoien, Strake Jesuit - HSNCT (32/28/10) and PACE (37/41). Kile led Strake to 4th at PACE and 7th at HSNCT. Kile is also probably the best poetry player in the nation. Put him on your lit and overall ballots.
Nhat Tong, Strake Jesuit - Nhat is making TAMU proud by his fine arts expertise, going 21/22 at PACE in primarily FA and getting 15 powers at HSNCT despite his TWENTY TWO NEGS????????? (Power to neg percentage is actually 68%). His performance at PACE, however, truly shows his fine arts capabilities. Put him on your fine arts ballot.

Gokulan Anand, Greenhill - He went 31/16/11 on HSNCT which is cool. He should be on your lit and overall ballots, though he should be behind Kile in lit,
Josh Rubel, Greenhill - no geo poll :sad: he’s also very good too, though not sure how he may fit on any polls
Shruti Shiva, Greenhill - Shruti is very good at science, though her stats have gone down through the season

Mitchel Shadden, James E Taylor - he was the leading scorer in HSNCT prelims, put him on your individual polls

Aaryan Sagar, Cinco Ranch - Aaryan posted 39/41/13 in Cinco’s journey to T10 at HSNCT. He is very good. Put him on your individual poll.

Again, feel free to tell me who I missed.
Last edited by byogaman on Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Aditya S.
St. Mark’s School of Texas '24
ethanfeldman
Kimahri
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2022 3:42 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by ethanfeldman »

I'll talk about some Solon people.
Prahalad Rao History. Over one power per game on HSNCT and PACE and notably scored top 2 in history at a stacked dart national invitational that included Param Gatupalli and Vishal Sareddy. Prahalad also won matchups against DCDS and Lambert in history at PACE and HSNCT, respectively. I believe he belongs somewhere in the 5 to 10 range.
Grant Maorana FA and generalist. Over one power per game at both HSNCT and PACE despite FA having less weight in the distribution. He is probably one of the greatest AFA players of all time, with him being rarely beaten on any non-niche AFA. In the first half of the year, he averaged being out buzzed on 1 FA per tournament. He also is notable for his ability to fraud, including getting science over Aadi Karthik multiple times.
Ethan Feldman Sci. Over one power per game at HSNCT and exactly one on PACE. I notably was in 3rd place in sci powers for DART nationwide, a field with sci players like Shiva Tegulla, Alan Xie, Aadi Karthik, Shreyas Singh, and Aaditya Sharma. At DART, I also powered 8 out of the ten biology tossups. I also have notable matchup victories against Aadi Karthik at PACE, Alan Xie at HSNCT and various other tournaments, and Liam Cross at PACE and other tournaments.
Last edited by ethanfeldman on Tue Jun 14, 2022 8:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ethan Feldman Solon 2023
kyubb
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat May 09, 2020 11:48 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by kyubb »

two people to shill on my team:

Alison Yau(lit)- she's pretty goated.
evidence needed? check vandy abc, reinstein/hari online, as well as gnats(2p/g on sct dii!)
her solid neg control should be highlighted
these gaudy stats don't even tell the full story, her bonus conversion is absolutely amazing!!!!
when i played with her at pace, i can't recall a time she 10ed a lit bonus(wow!)
Therefore, she should definitely be somewhere on your literature poll, although I don't exactly know other players that well to know where.

Zach Tseng(fa)- also pretty goated. (mhm)
he's pretty dang good at fa, especially visual
if he played at pace, chattahoochee would surely have had a t10 performance
need stats? check hari, gnats, basically everything on hdwhite
also again with solid neg control
In conclusion, Zach Tseng should definitely be somewhere on your fine arts poll, although I don't really know other players that well to know where.

these players cover other categories, but i don't nearly know enough about those categories to make a good shill in those areas.
Kyunghwan Lim
hooch '23
nyzhang
Lulu
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun May 03, 2020 4:32 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by nyzhang »

Here are some people I think are pretty good:

Despite not playing much this year, Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford performed incredibly well at HSNCT, beating many teams ranked higher than him while leading East Chapel Hill to a third place finish. Benjamin is one of the best Geo/CE/Other players in the game, and has deep pockets of knowledge in history, RMPSS, and literature. Rank him in your top 10 overall.

In my opinion, Rachel Ezrielev has improved more than any other player this year, going from barely 1p/g playing IS on RM's B team to nearly 1.5p/g in the PACE top bracket while being shadowed by Gus. Rachel is an incredibly deep lit specialist who scales particularly well on the college canon. You should rank them highly for literature, as well as for the sophomore poll.

Sinecio Morales has also improved a ton this year, leading Auburn in scoring at PACE. He's very deep in fine arts, but also has good coverage of literature, RMPSS, and science. Rank him for fine arts, and overall.

Darryl Wang is almost certainly a top 3 science player this year, and has a good case for being the best. He put up absurd numbers at HSNCT and ARCADIA, and routinely led Darien in scoring despite only buzzing on science. He's unbeatable on biology, and is very good at all other subcatagories. Rank him highly for science.

Anuttam Ramji performed very well playing solo at PACE this year, a fact made even more impressive when you consider he ostensibly only covers 6/6 of the distribution. He has deep specialist knowledge in literature, philosophy, and social science while evidently also having good generalism. Consider ranking him for RMPSS, and rank him for literature and overall.

Finally, I don't know them, but Aidan Lim of Singapore American put up excellent stats at PACE and should probably be ranked overall.
Last edited by nyzhang on Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Nathan Zhang
NCSSM '2021 Cornell '2025
William McCurley
Lulu
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2019 11:34 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by William McCurley »

I am going to try not to be too pretentious this time:

I (Will McCurley) think I am top 5 or top 10 overall. My results (2nd at IPNCT, 1st individual at ASCA State, 3rd individual at HSNCT) in addition to my team’s results from HSNCT in particular should speak for themselves. Also consider me for top 10 in science; anyone who has played with or against me can vouch for this.

As far as other players I think were notably good from the tournaments I played this year:

Special shoutouts go to Kapil Nathan from my state of Alabama. He is one of the best in history and geography for sure and likely in the top 25 overall. He may get overshadowed in some other categories by his teammates, but he is an excellent history/geo player and solid generalist from what I have seen. He is also just a really gracious person and a great friend, so he deserves recognition in this poll.

Karsten Rynearson from Philips Academy has consistently been an amazing player year after year. I am not sure why he was not at HSNCT, but his other tournament results, particularly from when I played against him at IPNCT, were fantastic. Likely top 5 in literature too

I played Max Yang from Ladue at both IPNCT and HSNCT. He is excellent at geography and a decent generalist too.

I also played Akash Bhowmick from Carmel at both IPNCT and HSNCT. Akash’s PPG was very impressive at IPNCT, and his leading Carmel’s team is of course remarkable. He is easily top 20 or higher overall.

Cooper Roh from Hotchkiss is one of, if not the best, history player judging from what I saw at IPNCT. He is also a really nice guy from our interactions at that tournament.

Charles Young from Barrington is one of the best fine arts players, again judging from IPNCT, and probably top 25 overall.

Sinecio Morales from Rockford Auburn was excellent with religion/myth and fine arts at IPNCT.

Stevie Miller from Winston Churchill is probably top 5 in history and is a decent generalist.

Connor Blake from Kinkaid is likely one of, if not the best, science players. Vedul Palavajjhala and Cole Hartung are also notable from Kinkaid.

There are definitely other great players that I have played or watched play whom I am not specifically noting (Keshav Kumar from Homestead, Gabe Forrest from College Heights Christian, Andrew Minagar from Caddo Magnet, Arthur Gayden from Detroit Country Day, Aiden Dartley from Ridgewood, and Andrew Zeng from Hunter), but those were some highlights.
I want to thank the entire quiz bowl community for helping make my senior year the best it could be. I have had nothing but positive in-person interactions with players across the country, and I will never forget what this game and its players have given me.
Last edited by William McCurley on Thu Jun 16, 2022 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Will McCurley

Baker ‘22
Auburn ‘26
Wish I could change my username
User avatar
joycan98
Lulu
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 8:11 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by joycan98 »

I’m going to shill some people I think are cool in no particular order. Here we go!

Gabe Forrest should be, perhaps unsurprisingly, near the top of any sane fine arts ballot—he knows an absolutely ungodly amount of visual and other fine arts, and I imagine his depth in those categories is unparalleled by any other high schooler. He’s also just an incredibly solid player (duh!) and an absolute bop of a person. If there was a ballot for “most fascinating person” he’d be first on the ballot.

Camden Williams should be, also perhaps unsurprisingly, near the top of any sane freshman ballot. I’ve had the pleasure of having his growth as a player live tweeted to me this whole year, and having played him at PACE, he certainly lived up to the hype! While he’s still growing into depth as a player, he’s already an incredible generalist at regular difficulties.

Owen Arneson is one of the greatest myth players I have ever had the pleasure of playing (though I did beat him in a scrim that one time!). I’m not sure if his (near) total dominance in mythology grants him a top 10 in RMPSS (myth poll when?), but its certainly worth commending.

…I’ll shill people not from Missouri now. Dang, I don’t even live there!

I didn’t have the pleasure of playing Allie Hoffert this year, but she also destroys on myth. Respect!

Karsten Rynearson is still really good. Shocker! Cooper Roh is also still really good. SHOCKER! The northeast circuit won’t be the same without these two.

Rachel Ezrielev is another unbelievably good literature player. I unfortunately also did not get the pleasure of playing them this year, but I’ve witnessed them get crazy powers without even breaking a sweat many times over while working with them this year on various sets. I also found out they were a sophomore literally like two minutes ago and I am very much awed.

Sinecio Morales is a very, very good generalist, and also boatloads of fun to play against. Their enthusiasm for the game and love for what they do shines through not just in the insane number of points they score but also their friendliness in and out of rounds.

Cindy Gao is not only the sweetest person you will ever meet but also an absolute threat on literature. Every time we play Belmont (sadly not often) and they start reading literature words, I just put my buzzer down. Their depth is both insane and unparalleled.

I believe Sam Macchi is primarily a history player, but they’re also just really good across the non-lit humanities board. They got better SO fast this year—check out their three 4-power rounds at PACE.

Shout out to Pablo Hu and Ella Sheffield as well—I had the absolute pleasure of watching all of Belmont rocket upwards in ability this year, and it was nothing short of incredible. They are a beautiful, kind, fun, and scarily smart team, and they deserve all the kudos.

Andy Gao isn’t even in high school yet. ?????? what ??????? how ???????? can I rank him anyways ????????
Joy An, Harvard
@joy0105
Jcm48
Lulu
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2020 2:53 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Jcm48 »

I have no specific aims with this post aside from to shill people that I have been impressed by over the course of the year. I will say up front that I have certain biases (towards Missourians, towards people I am working on writing projects with, and against the undoubted scores of people that I have not met or seen play) so anything I say here is probably going to focus more on the strengths of people I know rather than direct comparisons to others who play the same categories.

I want to start out by talking about a few Missourians.

First and foremost, Gabe Forrest is far and away the best player in Missouri this year and deserves to be ranked not only within the top 5 of your individual ballot but also within the top 5 on literature and nowhere but #1 on fine arts. I cannot overstate how deep his FA and humanities coverage across the board is, the guy got 2 p/g on WORKSHOP including multiple four-power rounds and was one of only four players to hit 50 powers at NSC. Also he's just a really nice person and wore a really cool butterfly outfit on the first day of NSC, which has to be good for something.

Camden Williams from Mexico HS should be ranked very highly on your freshman ballot. He came out of basically nowhere this year to go from 2/28/11 on IS-206 in October to 40/46/22 on RAFT and the highest scoring freshman at NSC in June. I think the only two freshmen who are clearly better than him at this point are Arin Parsa and Robert Wang from Livingston, which is astonishing.

Avnith Kumar from Jefferson City is probably just short of making most people's freshman ballots right now, but I'd like to shout him out anyway because he seems impressively dedicated and is going to be very good sooner rather than later. He's already one of the better hist/geo/ce players on the midwest circuit from what I've seen of him this year.

Braxton Davis, College Heights' newly-minted second scorer, is a very good freshman sci player. I'm not shilling him here because I think he should get poll votes -- he just hasn't played enough tournaments -- but he's going to be completely insane next year and people shouldn't be surprised when he becomes much more known.

There are also some players in other states that I'd like to highlight.

While there's some really obvious bias in me talking about Joy An in this post, they merit discussion for votes regardless of that. They are unquestionably T5 on myth this year -- probably top 2 or 3 -- and should be placed highly on your RMPSS poll, however, I think everybody already knew that much. Unfortunately, it seems some people have the false impression that Joy only buzzes on myth and sometimes FA, which is wildly incorrect. They are also a threat to buzz on lit, sci, and whatever else they've decided to know that week. Joy is also improving rapidly, going from 8/23 at last year's NSC to 28/45 and 18th individual scorer this year, and topscoring the prelims of Prison Bowl mainsite. Curiously, they have done this without complete mastery of any single category outside of myth. They know so many things that it's nigh-on impossible to write a packet where they will not score a lot of points. Personally, I think they should probably be somewhere in the second half of your overall ballot in addition to being ranked highly on RMPSS.

Rohan Ganeshan is the best sophomore this year, as well as easily top 5 overall (83 powers at HSNCT, 20 powers over 9 games on ARCADIA, etc etc). Rank him accordingly. He is also definitively top 5 at lit, and probably at FA as well, although Illinoisans are assuredly better equipped to talk about his category poll rankings than I am.

On the subject of really good humanities players from Illinois, Sinecio Morales from Rockford Auburn and Teigue Kelly of Waubonsie Valley are both very strong lit/fa players who should definitely be ranked in your ballots for those categories. Sinecio in particular warrants overall votes, as they went 27/73 at NSC for 9th individual scorer in spite of a strong supporting cast that combined for an additional 26 powers. He's also another incredibly nice good player, which is something we can never have enough of. Teigue posted the simply astonishing statline of 53/5/17 at the Upper Midwest mirror of RAFT III, and powered 7 tossups on ARCADIA while playing next to Vishal Sareddy. I don't know enough about Teigue to say whether he deserves overall votes or not, but he surely deserves votes on the lit and FA polls.

There's also a couple more Illinoisans that I am not going to devote full posts to that I think should be mentioned. Jason Qin of IMSA is a very strong FA player (especially AFA, if I remember correctly) and should probably get a lot of votes on the respective poll. While she doesn't yet warrant poll votes, I was also surprised by Brielle Rach of Rockford Auburn when I read for her at NSC. Her statline is deceptive - in spite of the relative lack of powers, it seemed that every other bonus I read to her team she would convert, including a number of pretty effortless pulls of hard parts on various categories. It was impressive and I imagine that she will only improve from here.

As has already been mentioned in other posts, Kile Stenoien knows many things and should be ranked highly on your lit poll as well as somewhere in the upper middle of your overall poll. He also seems to be very good at frauding and thinking laterally, as he got a few super early buzzes on questions in my room at NSC off of simply figuring out the tossup.

Rachel Ezrielev from Richard Montgomery should be placed very highly on both your sophomore poll and literature poll. They went 22/17 at NSC while playing in championship bracket (including going 4/0 against Cindy Gao of all people, as a literature player). Their depth seems comparable to or better than basically every other literature player currently in high school based on what I've seen of them in our shared writing servers and you should give them many many votes.

Finally, I'd like to note that, as I'm sure everyone is well aware by now, any ballot that does not rank Aadi Karthik as the best player this year is wrong. He won NSC while putting up perhaps the best individual performance at that tournament ever and that should speak for itself.
Last edited by Jcm48 on Thu Jun 16, 2022 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Joel Miles
Raymore-Peculiar HS '21
University of Minnesota '25
User avatar
Nurostep
Lulu
Posts: 29
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:17 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Nurostep »

Hi everyone!!

I want to mention some people I think are a bit less known and will not already be ranked on ballots, or who people may have forgotten since they aren't always in the online circuit or may not have played against.
Disclaimer that this will probably be heavily skewed towards Illinois.

Freshmen:
Omkar Marathe from William Fremd is a very impressive literature player who put up 16/8/2 on only literature at the Upper Midwest RAFT III mirror. Camden Williams from Mexico put up a statline of 14/61 at this year's pace, putting him 28th on the rankings and making him the only freshman in the top 60 (!!).
(also Arin Parsa, Robert Wang, Aatreyo Bhattacharya, and Tanay Bodducherla should be noted as this year's probable top 4 freshmen)

Sophomores:
Most people are probably already planning to rank Rohan Ganeshan, Charles Young, and Rohan Kher (why do two of them go to the same school wtf!?) on their sophomore polls, so I don't think I need to say much about them. I will remind people not to forget that Cole Hartung is a sophomore and probably is deserving of a top 10 placement. Stephen Walsh from IMSA, Soren Gjesfjeld from Bloomington and Allie Hoffert from Northfield should also be considered, they're all rockstars. Also, Matthew Kohn from Hunter is a sophomore, just saying.

here I will be less focused on non-well-known people but might mention a couple
Categories:
I don't know enough about history to make super educated suggestions about less well known players, but you should probably rank Aiden Dartley, Amogh Kulkarni, Ryan Sun, Andrew Zeng, Cole Hartung, Cooper Roh, Vishal Sareddy and Rohan Kher in some order as your top 8.

For science, I think Darryl Wang is a step above the rest, especially in biology, but cases are also to be made for Aadi Karthik, Connor Blake and Pratyush Jaishaker. I think these four are a head above the rest of the competition in science this year. For the rest of the group, I'd like to highlight Shiva Tegulla, Rohan Ganeshan, Lawrence Zhao and Aditya Sharma. Ethan Feldman and Will McCurley have also proven very strong science players. Although he's more known for literature, Anish Kodali could be ranked on your science poll.

I think this year's top literature players are undeniably some combination of Justin Chen, Aadi Karthik, Karsten Rynearson, Richard Lin, and Rohan Ganeshan. Other insane literature players this year include Cindy Gao, Anuttam Ramji, Gabe Forrest, Rachel Ezrielev, Kile Stenoien, Charles Young and the above-mentioned Anish Kodali. The race for lit is probably the tightest of all of the categories this year, and there are plenty of players who may have been top 10 in other year's who won't make people's polls this year.

Ok, I don't think he's the top fine arts player this year but I have to shout out my teammate Alex Crowell. He went 13/7 on fine arts at this year's NSC, with me going 5/9 on the same category right next to him and strong players like Gabe Forrest throughout the tournament taking fine arts off of us as well. He is definitely impressive and should be ranked on your fine arts ballot. Of course, I couldn't even shill Alex without speaking of Gabe Forrest, who deserves nothing less than second on your fine arts poll. I, personally, think this year's top fine arts player has to be Max Brodsky. Some other people you should consider including are Grant Maiorana, Charles Young, Rohan Ganeshan, Jason Qin, and Teigue Kelly.

There are only two current high school players who I think scale to high levels at all four categories of RMPSS, which are Vedul Palavajjhala and Tasis Gemill-Nexon. For some other recommendations (although most of these people are skewed in one direction or the other) Allie Hoffert and Joy An are both VERY good at mythology, but I think Joy is stronger at the rest of RMPSS than Allie, so I would give them the edge. Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford has been incredibly strong at RMPSS, especially social science.

I am not going to provide anything for overall suggestions because I won't have much to say that people don't already know/haven't already said, and this post is already too long. However, I would like to mention Corbin Tutterow, who is a very impressive generalist, and is especially strong at literature. He could be ranked somewhere in your top 30 poll. I would lastly like to humbly request that you consider ranking me for any of the following polls: RMPSS, Science, Fine Arts, Overall. I think I have put up some strong performances this year, but there are so many people who are much, much better than me and definitely should be ranked higher.

I hope to see you all next year in some capacity, whether it be a chat on Discord, in between rounds at a tournament, or as a staffer. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!!

edit: after noticing he has not been mentioned at all, please don't forget that Kyunghwan Lim exists and is very good at FA and lit, and also could be ranked overall
Last edited by Nurostep on Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:12 am, edited 3 times in total.
All of our buzzes can become powers if we have the courage to neg.
Sinecio Morales
(Rockford) Auburn HS '23
Johns Hopkins University '27
User avatar
CPiGuy
Auron
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:19 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by CPiGuy »

Here are some players you should consider voting for. My knowledge of the high school circuit is pretty non-exhaustive so I will probably miss many people who deserve your votes as well.

Freshmen: Arin Parsa continues to be really good at quizbowl. Aatreyo Bhattacharyya and Tanay Bodducherla both deserve your votes as well -- look at Tanay's HSNCT performance and Aatreyo's PACE performance. They're both really good. Robert Wang led his team to t-10 at HSNCT and is an absurdly good history specialist. You should definitely vote for him in the freshman poll and consider voting for him in the general history poll (I'm not familiar enough with the circuit as a whole to know whether he's a shoo-in here but absolutely consider him). Deven Hagen led his team to t-7 at HSNCT. Do not overlook Deven because he doesn't play on his school's A team -- he's really good and you should vote for him here too. He also played great in all the NSC games in which he had adequate sleep, leading his team in playoffs and superplayoffs and being the second-highest freshman scorer across the entire tournament. Speaking of high-scoring freshmen at NSC, Camden Williams is very good at quizbowl and did extremely well at NSC. Abigail Lee is also quite good and definitely merits consideration. Ali Hamzeh from Kinkaid is probably the nation's worst victim of the shadow effect and has been super impressive at nationals; he should probably get some votes. Charles Heydt also led his team to playoffs at HSNCT. He knows many things! Some other names to consider are Evan Schleck, Tate Osborne, John Augustyn, and Brodie Henry.

Sophomores: Rohan Ganeshan should be #1 on your ballot. Like. Go look at literally any of his stats. He's absurd. Cole Hartung and Charles Young should probably be 2/3 in some order. Rohan Kher is somehow not even the best sophomore named Rohan from the northwest suburbs of Chicago but he's really good at quizbowl and you should vote for him. Soren Gjesfjeld didn't get to play either nats but is also really good (hey i'm starting to get really, really scared of the 2024 Illinois NASAT team). Lucca Ruggieri was an important contributor to a Great Valley team that made top bracket at NSC. Allie Hoffert was an HSNCT all-star and is also extremely good at mythology. You should vote for her. Alan Fan from TJ also seems worthy of some votes -- he did very well on pretty balanced teams at both PACE and HSNCT. Also Matthew Kohn is quite good, especially at science and VFA, but played on Hunter A at both nationals and hence got shadow effected. I just learned that Rachel Ezrielev is apparently a sophomore and you should vote for them super highly! They're so good at literature!

I have less strong opinions about the overall polls but here are some. If you don't put Aadi Karthik #1, I don't know what you're doing. Justin Chen is obviously insane at literature; you should put him first in that category. You should also rank Cindy Gao and Rachel Ezrielev in that category. I mentioned Rohan Kher in the sophomore poll but he should get votes for best history players as well. Liam Cross of DCC is absurd at science and his buzzes were key to DCC's HSNCT win. Vote for him in the science poll. Also vote for Darryl Wang for science -- I'm pretty sure he went 4/0 on it against TJ A at HSNCT, in just one of many impressive performances from him this season.

I will probably make another post later about teams / general appreciation posting, but this is my contribution to ranking-specific points.
Last edited by CPiGuy on Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
CabbageHugs
Lulu
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:57 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by CabbageHugs »

Since this is my first year playing on a top team and we didn't play many high school tournaments at that, I'll focus on DMV people who I'm more familiar with.

I want to recognize Joseph Chambers and his team from Freeman High School who put on impressive performances at HSNCT beating several talented teams (Glasgow, Beavercreek, and Green Hill) to a 10th place finish. I also moderated a game where they went toe-to-toe with a full DCC towards the beginning of the season, only losing by 20 points.

Richard Montgomery A is very good. Returning Gus Carvell (who should be ranked overall), the three sophomores on their team (who all merit sophomore consideration), Rachel Ezrielev, Josh Fan, and Joseph Chen, all stepped up to make their team top-tier.

Stevie Miller from Winston Churchill deserves consideration for History.

Anurag Sodhi is very good and should get a sophomore ranking.

Here at TJ we have many wonderful players that its hard to pick just a few.
My wonderful seniors Pratyush Jaishanker, Justin Chen, and Elliot Lee on TJ A are all very cool and good at quiz bowl. For a team that didn't play regular season tournaments, HSNCT and NSC were close returns to their dominant form from last year. They all deserve consideration both overall and in their respective categories. Justin might also be considered for his RMPSS capabilities.
We have so many juniors and sophomores that work pretty cohesively together that its hard to say any are better than others. It's a generally good problem to have too many good players but it's hard for purposes of ranking.
In their freshmen year, Deven Hagen (better on HSNCT) and Abigail Lee (better on PACE) did not disappoint and if they continue scaling, they will be frightening in the coming years.
Elle Lee
she|they
Longfellow (2017-19)
Thomas Jefferson(2019-2023)
Longfellow (2023-)
anish.kodali
Kimahri
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2020 10:30 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by anish.kodali »

I wanted to shill some players that I know (some of whom have already been discussed above). If I miss you I apologize but there are so many great players this year that flew under the radar. Note that the categories in the parentheses are where I think the player deserves consideration, not necessarily where I’d be ranking them.

First off, I wanted to shout out Nolan Greenways (history, RMPSS) and Rahul Narayanan (FA) for being great teammates. We started playing together in 8th grade, making a t-33 run at MSNCT, and ended off with a pair of better finishes at t-15 and 7th place in our last year together. Nolan could merit some consideration for history, as he was the third history scorer at ARCADIA and second at HARI. He was also really good at social science on PACE and ARCADIA, where he was first overall scorer, as well as being a strong religion player. Rahul was an extremely ideal fourth scorer, getting a ton of clutch buzzes and bonus pulls. He also made us significantly better at fine arts, though he’s probably not top-10 in that. If you need someone to fill out your history or RMPSS polls, consider Nolan, but the player pool is so stacked this year that they probably won’t make it.

However, Lucca Ruggieri (sophomore) definitely deserves to be on your sophomore ballet. I know there’s a lot of emphasis on PACE stats in these polls, but this underscores the fact that Lucca was our “NAQT” specialist this year, covering American history, political CE, and geography. He was the biggest reason we went from t-49 last year to t-15 this year. He was arguably the most consistent player on our team at HSNCT, routinely putting up 2-3 buzzes per game which propelled us to wins over excellent teams. It’s also worth noting that he went 2/3/0 against DCC and 2/1/1 against DCDS on SCT, and at HSNCT he went 1/3/0 against SCP and 2/0/0 against Buffalo Grove. I personally have him sixth after Rohan G, Cole, Charles, Rohan K, and Rachel, all of whom were described in earlier posts.

Now, going onto some other people that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing throughout my last two years in HSQB.

AZ Faiz (overall, literature) quietly led Manheim to a t-24 and 29th place finish at nationals. He was insanely underrated last year and should not be underestimated this year, as he always puts up good stats against top teams. Danny Peelen (overall, literature) probably won’t crack your polls this year, but he’s getting a lot better and could lead Cedar Crest to excellent finishes at nationals next year.

All of the Kinkaid people deserve consideration in the polls. Cole Hartung (overall, history) is not a binary knowledge player as many people may think - he has a ton of real knowledge that contributed to an insane performance at PACE (easily top 3 history IMO), and given that he was scoring at the same level as many generalists he should be in your overall polls. Vedul Palavajjhala (overall, FA, RMPSS) is the best RMPSS player that I’ve ever played and likewise put up insane results at every tournament. He should probably be 1st in your RMPSS poll and in the top 15 overall. Connor Blake (overall, science) is an insane science specialist who scales up seamlessly to the highest difficulties. Being the top scorer of that team while playing a ton of good specialists in the top bracket is commendable and he deserves to be in your top 4 in science and top 20 overall. While I’m less familiar with Ali Hamzeh (freshman), getting 12 powers on the 4th place HSNCT team definitely deserves some votes in the freshman poll.

Grant Maiorana (FA, overall) should not be ranked below #2 on your FA poll, and his consistency at nationals is what propelled Solon to two top-10 finishes at nats. Ethan Feldman (science) also deserves serious consideration for the science poll, as his improvement throughout the latter half of the year let Solon go deep into the playoffs at HSNCT and PACE. Rohan Navaneetha (literature) and Prahalad Rao (history) also could merit consideration for their respective categories.

Shourjo Ganguli (literature) and Alan Xie (science, overall) were both scary people to play against, especially Alan who I think has swept me in science every time I’ve played him. Alan should be in your top 10 for science and deserves some consideration for overall and Shourjo could merit votes for the latter half of the top 10 in literature. Arunn Sankar (overall) could also merit some consideration for usually being their top scorer, though he doesn’t seem to scale as well as the other two.

As mentioned earlier, Aadi Karthik (overall, history, literature, science, RMPSS) should be your #1 overall player, top-5 in science, and top-10 in literature, history, and RMPSS. However, I wanted to highlight Vishal Sareddy (overall, history) for being an incredible secondary scorer who has put up a ton of great results when playing without Aadi. His history specialism is extremely underrated, as I’ve seen him put up a ton of good buzzes over players like Cole in scrims, and of course putting up 30 PPG at nats while playing with Aadi is insane.

Arthur Gayden (overall, history, FA) and Costas Pavlou (overall, history) led DCDS to a pair of great finishes at nationals, and they always have a ton of crazy history buzzes whenever I play them. In particular, Costas should be in your top-5 in history and Arthur deserves consideration for top-10. Arthur is also quite good at fine arts and should be somewhere in your top-10 there too. I expect DCDS to be the biggest contender for nationals next year as well, since none of them graduate.

Given that we’ve played DCC so many times this year (like 5-7 times), I think I should probably shout them out. Drew Laroo (overall, history), Will Carstens (history), Michael Yousif (literature), and Liam Cross (science) are all excellent specialists in their categories. There will probably be some of that anti-HSNCT bias I described earlier, but there’s a reason that they won there. Definitely consider all of them for the categories I’ve mentioned earlier.

Some other players that I haven’t seen being discussed much. Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford should be high in your overall polls leading East Chapel Hill to third place at HSNCT, and deserves serious consideration for the history and RMPSS polls. Keshav Kumar is very similar, getting a fantastic finish at IPNCT and leading Homestead to a t-15 spot at HSNCT. From what I remember, he was really good at literature, fine arts, and history. Richard Lin is deservedly getting votes for literature, but he is also an underrated generalist (look at his HSNCT, ACF Winter, HARI, and ARCADIA stats) who could sneak into the overall polls. William Orr was downright scary to play against at IPNCT, and he should be in your top-10 for literature. Andrew Zeng is a top-5 player this year, a top-3 history specialist, and likely a top-10 lit specialist as well, and should not be underrated despite not playing as much as some other people.

There’s plenty more players that I’ve forgotten to mention here that deserve consideration, and I may make an additional post if I remember anyone else. Thanks to NAQT, PACE, and all the independent TDs, staffers, coaches, and players for making this activity so fun to play, and making my senior year so memorable.
Anish Kodali
GVHS '22
vedul
Lulu
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:14 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by vedul »

My teammates:
I believe that all four members of our PACE NSC team should be somewhere on your rankings this year.
Firstly, Ali Hamzeh (9) puts up some of the best buzzes I have ever seen both in practice and in tournaments and he would get many more points without the shadow effect from the rest of our team. He put up an impressive 12 powers on HSNCT on a strong team and performed similarly well at PACE. I believe he deserves a spot in the top 10 freshmen.
Cole Hartung (10) is one of the best history players I have ever seen, and I believe he is the best high school history player in the country this year. I also think that he should be considered for a spot between 10th and 20th on your overall player poll. I also think he is the 2nd best sophomore in the country.
Connor Blake (12) is easily a top 4 science player, and I would go as far to say he is the 2nd best in the country this year. Considering he is also a lit and visual fine arts specialist, I also believe that Connor should be around Cole, if not slightly higher, on your player poll.
Vedul Palavajjhala (12) (me). I think I should be ranked on the RMPSS poll and should be around my teammates on the overall player poll.
I would also like to shout out some of my friends who I think should be ranked:
Grant Maiorana (12) is, in my opinion, the best fine arts player in the country.
Anish Kodali (12) is an amazing science player and an even better literature player, and I think he should be ranked for both as well as a top 10 overall player.
Vishal Sareddy (12) is a very good history player and overall, but his stats do not always show this due to playing on a strong team.
Arthur Gayden’s (11) specialties are divided such that category polls understate his abilities. That being said, I think he deserves a high spot on the overall and history polls.
Costas Pavlou (11) is an enigma, but I think he is a very deep history player who deserves a high spot.
Ethan Feldman (11) is a very solid science player and I think he deserves a place on the science poll.
Kile Stenoien (12) is a very good literature player and generalist and I think he should be on both polls.
Allie Hoffert (10) is a very solid all-around player and I think she should be ranked as a top 10 sophomore this year.
Rachel Ezrielev (10) is an extremely good literature player and I think they should also be ranked for both literature and overall as a top 10 sophomore
Vedul Palavajjhala
Kinkaid '22
WUSTL '26
Piney Point Village, TX
User avatar
ParanoidAndroid
Kimahri
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 20, 2019 7:19 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by ParanoidAndroid »

I'll shout out some Carmel people:

Akash Bhowmik (hist, overall):
The initial stats might not look as impressive since this year's Carmel team was basically overlap hell, with players regularly getting buzzes in each other's "categories," but Akash has been more or less an anchor for our team this whole year. Even with numerous other great history players on the roster, Akash has remained top dog when it comes to history coverage on the team. Akash led the team to numerous top finishes at tournaments with Shrithan (more on that below), including t15 at HSNCT. Additionally, when not playing with Shrithan, he put up nearly 5 p/g on IS-206, with his team getting 25.36 ppb. He was also t10 at IPNCT. Akash has also gotten numerous clutch buzzes against top teams, and his performance is a huge factor in Carmel's rise this year. I haven't even touched on his coverage in nearly every category. He deserves a spot on the history and general poll.

Shrithan Sandadi (lit, overall):
Shrithan has quickly emerged as a pretty formidable lit player and generalist who shines on mACF sets, putting up nearly 4 powers a game on DART II on a Carmel team that got 2nd only to Lambert at that mirror. In addition, he led the team in scoring at HARI and ARCADIA, with Carmel being named co-champions of the tournament. But he has also done great on NAQT sets, matching Akash's ppg at HSNCT and getting 5.5 p/g on IS-206, as well as getting t19 at IPNCT. Shrithan's emergence as a great lit and sci player has also been a key reason why Carmel emerged as a team consistently ranked in the top 10 this year. Again, like with Akash, Shrithan can cover nearly everything. He deserves a spot on the literature and general poll.

Austin Guo (fa):
While I don't like blowing my own horn, I will say that I have put up stats in fine arts this year that warrant some consideration for the fine arts poll. I got 1 p/g on fa at HSNCT, and was able to get some buzzes off of many great players during the year. I was top vfa scorer on HARI and up there on fa overall (3rd or 4th), and I had 24 ppg on ARCADIA on almost exclusively fine arts buzzes.

Archit Kalra (sci):
Archit has developed impressive depth at science and a variety of other categories that have filled the team's needs very well, leading to some very very clutch buzzes in games, including at HSNCT and ARCADIA. Has been an invaluable sci player and should emerge even better as an overall player next year now that those seniors are gone.

Nolan Jones (hist, lit, overall):
Nolan has been one of our most committed members, showing a real devotion to the club and team. It sounds weird, but he just seems to get buzzes and pulls when you need him to. Also is an underrated overall player since he often gets shadowed by Akash and Shrithan as a history and literature player, as shown by him finishing 4th overall scorer on ARCADIA when playing without Akash or Shrithan. One of the most clutch players for us.

Raymond Pan (hist, lit):
Raymond has some crazy depth in history, first-lining tossups in ancient history at the college level. He only started playing in his junior year, but he had already developed into a great player within that span.

With most of this year's A team graduating, Carmel will probably be rebuilding. But, there are already a great group of juniors and underclassmen showing a great deal of promise, so I'd like to give a big shoutout to all of them.
Last edited by ParanoidAndroid on Sun Jun 19, 2022 1:07 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Austin Guo
Carmel '22
Princeton '26
matthewk
Kimahri
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:08 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by matthewk »

I was not present at many high school tournaments this year, but with the 16th place finish of Legation School (Singapore American) at PACE NSC, I would like to shill and promote some players and teams from the Asian circuit you should definitely include on your postseason poll. Please note that with the exception of Singapore American, some of these players/teams have only played Asian-centered tournaments, so do take this into consideration.

With no further ado, let's take a look at some teams!
Teams
Singapore American School
Singapore American School has made the Asian Circuit proud this year with numerous victories against formidable American teams. Going from missing out on the HSNCT playoffs last season, they have improved tremendously this year with their core trio of Atharv Chowdhary, Ryan Lee, and Aidan Lim, notable achievements including a 16th place finish at PACE NSC and a win at the Hong Kong International School Fall Invitational. Over the season, SAS achieved wins against University Lab, Wayzata, Detroit Catholic Central A, Ridgewood, Detroit Country Day, all teams in the upper echelons of Groger Ranks. When the SAS roster is complete and not playing overnight, they have tremendous potential and I urge anyone who sees this post to add SAS to your postseason poll. They're also very nice and chill people :)

Other than Singapore American, none of the teams in Asia played American mirrors, but I will shill Raffles, Hong Kong International School, Harrow, and Seoul Foreign School for their impressive performance across the season. I think many of these teams will be able to hold up against American teams if given the chance.

Players
DISCLAIMER: I may revisit this post following NASAT this weekend considering that Asia is sending two teams to the tournament.

The top scorer of Singapore American School is junior Aidan Lim, who has only been competing in Quizbowl for just over a year, his debut performance being last year's HSNCT. At PACE, Aidan placed 11th in prelim PPG ranking, and based on the recently posted category stats, ranked 5th in Science. Apart from his outstanding performance at PACE, Aidan was also the leading scorer at multiple open mirrors (IQBT NASAT 2021 & BHSAT OPEN) for the Asia team and is probably one of the best generalists and science players we have here. He'll be playing for Asia A at NASAT this weekend, so see his performance for yourself and I would shill for you to include Aidan on your science category poll and individual player poll. Definitely put him in your top 30 player poll, no questions needed.
UPDATE: Following post-NASAT, see Joy's post for more details, but Aidan was our top scorer on Asia A, and gave many teams a run for their money on some of the sci questions. I would strongly recommend for you to include him on your sci and generalist polls!

With regards to players from Singapore American, I will give a shoutout to Atharv Chowdhary (Senior) and recommend you rank him in your RMPSS poll. Atharv came in the top-10 for RMP at PACE-NSC, and usually leads RMP rankings at our local Asia tournaments and mirrors.

Despite not playing a single Quizbowl tournament this season, I will take the time to shill and promote senior Yanni Ranollo from LaSalle Greenhills in the Philippines. Yanni was the champion of both the IHBB Bee and Bowl Asian Championships this year and repeated this same feat at every regional competition he participated in too (with the exception of a Bowl loss to Seoul International). I'll add more to this after his NASAT performance, but Yanni's VA and History is one of the best in Asia, and he has long dominated the IHBB circuit in Asia. I would shill for you to put him in your VA or history poll, but I think the stats from NASAT will help support this. He'll be at IHO this summer, so watch out! Yanni's teammate Lance Bautista is also another formidable player. Lance has notably finished 2nd at the IAC Global History Bee against very good history specialists and is probably unparalleled in his knowledge of European history. He's also played some college open mirrors and put up some pretty sick buzzes. I play with both Yanni and Lance as part of the Asian Spring Showdown Duos League, and both have been a pleasure to play with (and have also carried me to being in the top 4).
UPDATE: Yanni also played at NASAT, I don't have his exact buzz stats, but think he still played quite well and is a great teammate overall.

Other players I will give a shoutout to include the following (I put some of their best categories in parentheses).
Etienne Ong (Science), Andrei Hui (VFA), Sid Raykar (Generalist/Sci), Ryan Lee (Lit)
Last edited by matthewk on Mon Jun 20, 2022 7:07 am, edited 3 times in total.
Matthew Kaung
Asian Quizbowl Alliance

American School in Japan ('22)
Singapore SAF (22-24)
Prahalad.Rao
Kimahri
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2020 3:52 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Prahalad.Rao »

Alright, Even though my teammate Ethan already did a post on us, I'm gonna talk about a bunch of Ohio people anyway. Might as well do Michigan as well seeing as they're so close by:
Starting with my school, a bunch of Solon players for your consideration. Grant Maiorana was the MVP of both of our top 10 finishes at HSNCT and PACE, locking down FA like a stalwart in virtually every game we played. He even had a power a game on ARCADIA of all sets. He also has random bits of deep knowledge across the entire canon, from science and literature to sports and current events. He should definitely be considered for your #1 in the FA poll, and if not that, no lower than #3. You should also consider him for your overall individual poll as well - I feel like high scorers will get a bias in the overall poll, even though players can be just as valuable without having to drop 100+ points a game. Ethan Feldman has had insane improvement in the last 6 months in science. He played competitive against insanely strong science players like Aadi Karthik (Lambert) and Pratyush Jaishanker (TJ) at HSNCT, and had an equally impressive performance at PACE. You should definitely consider him for your top 10 in sci. As for myself, I don't know if I'm a top 10 history specialist, but I had a decent PACE performance and went 3-1 against Costas Pavlou and Arthur Gayden of DCDS, two of the best history players in the nation.
Alan Xie of Beavercreek should honestly be top 5 on your science poll. The man dropped an absolutely absurd 36 powers in 13 games at HSNCT, and was second overall at PACE in science. The man is a beast and easily the best science player in Ohio (Sorry Ethan :sad: ) and you should honestly consider him for your overall poll. Shourjo Ganguli has been the most dominant literature player in Ohio for the entire season. If you need any proof just look at his SCT-DII performance, where he dropped nearly 2 powers a game on a pretty hard set and was third in the field for powers. He's easily a top 10 lit player. Finally, Arunn Sankar might not be a top tier specialist, but he's an incredible generalist with a lot of deep history knowledge to go along with it. Arunn is easily a top 20 player and you should rank him as such.
Calvin Bostleman (Toledo School for the Arts) and Jack Rado (James A. Garfield) are both incredible generalists who had amazing performances at SSNCT in particular (5th and 3rd in the open and public divisions respectively, with Garfield even winning the Very Small School championship) - both of them led their respective divisions in scoring as well. I'm not particularly sure how well either of them scale past regular difficulty (Calvin did have 22 powers on SCT-DII for what it's worth), but you should definitely consider them for the overall poll.
Going to Michigan, Costas Pavlou is easily one of the best history specialists in the nation. This man dropped 13 powers in 9 games on ARCADIA and had some incredible performances at both HSNCT and PACE. Arthur Gayden has become one of the best generalists in the nation, and is incredibly good at history, FA, and literature in particular (though he has a small deficiency in science). He had a impressive 66 powers in just 33 games at both nationals. I think he should be at least top 15 overall and definitely top 10 for Fine Arts, and maybe for history and literature as well.
I haven't played Troy at all this year, but Vishesh Verma (History), Yashwanth Bajji (Science), and Dennis Yang (Literature/Fine Arts I think?) all look like solid specialists and as good as they were last year. You should definitely consider them for your category polls.
Finishing up with DCC, probably one of the most impressive teams this year: Drew Laroo is a top 10 history player. If you don't rank him you're doing something wrong. He also had some incredible performances throughout the season as an individual, including three consecutive IS sets where he averaged over 75 points a game and combined for 104 powers in 25 games, as well as HSNCT, where he had an impressive 40 powers in 18 games. You should probably rank him on your individual ballot as well. Liam Cross (Science), Michael Yousif (Literature), and Will Carstens (History) are also all solid specialists in their own right, and you should consider all of them in their respective categories.
That's pretty much it from me. This year has been an amazing one, and while it's sad to see a lot of incredible players graduating, I still can't wait for what next season brings. Good luck to everyone next year!
Prahalad Rao
Solon High School (Class of 2023)
User avatar
joycan98
Lulu
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 8:11 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by joycan98 »

Just got done with NASAT prelims, so I will do more shilling. My teammate Darryl Wang is still one of the greatest science players I've ever seen in action, getting crazy buzzes and 30s on NASAT without breaking a sweat. He should be near the top of any sane science poll. That said, Aidan Lim gave him a considerable run for his money when we played Asia A--their team put up more of a fight against us on science than any other team. Having now played him, I would highly recommend that people consider Aidan for a top spot in their science polls.

Also, shout out to my PACE NSC and NASAT teammate Nathan Nicholas. He is primarily a history player (and is darn good at his job), but his greatest strength comes from random and entirely unpredictable out-of-category buzzes. His performance on both NSC and NASAT history has been extremely impressive, earning him incredibly early buzzes playing next to Cooper Roh of all people. He hasn't made that many appearances this season, and his scoring is diluted more by out-of-category buzzing than other history specialists, but I would encourage people to keep him in mind.

ADDENDUM: post-NASAT thoughts

Charles Young is so dang good at fine arts. Knowing this is one thing, but seeing it in action during NASAT finals was genuinely incredible. Fine arts is a competitive category this year, but I'd put him at the fringes of the top 5. Honestly, having seen him play, cases could be made for putting him even higher--some of the buzzes he got yesterday, especially considering who his opponents and teammates were, were out-of-this-world good.
Last edited by joycan98 on Mon Jun 20, 2022 4:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Joy An, Harvard
@joy0105
bkmcavoybickford
Wakka
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 6:40 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

NASAT is done so it's time for me to mention just a few of the many people in quiz bowl worth appreciating or deserving of votes. I'm not going to vote in any of the polls, but I'm glad this thread lets me mention all these people:

Starting with East Chapel Hill, I'll give a shout out to all of my teammates, especially the ones at HSNCT. Y'all should consider Krishna Rajagopal for a spot towards the bottom of the FA poll- he got 24 ppg and over 1 p/g at HSNCT as overwhelmingly a FA player, since he was being shadowed on RM and history. Luke Zhang and Graham Troy are both great at history and super fun to play with- I think history is too tight a category for either to be top 10, especially since it seems like all three of us split history points equally. The B team made HSNCT so much more enjoyable (and negative-five-filled). Also, thanks immensely to Atticus Crothers for running Brain Game exceptionally well and being better at sports questions than anybody else I have ever seen. Every single one of my teammates made running this team a joy; good luck to y'all next year!

"Outside" of East, much thanks to Aalok Bhattacharyya and Sanjay Rajagopal for disguising themselves as East Chapel Hill players, although Sanjay is, as of about a week ago, an official East player. Also congratulations to Bo Chi and Luke Chen, two honorary East players who performed well at HSNCT.

NC NASAT also deserves a lot of praise- it was a wonderful last tournament of high school quiz bowl, thanks to my teammates. Aditya Sharma and Chinmay Talikoti both are well deserving of votes on the individual poll, although I'll add a caveat that I'm not very good at comparing the strengths of players from different circuits. I'm not sure that Chinmay actually played enough tournaments to be eligible, but he was commanding at history when he played and had great real knowledge across categories. Aditya is probably top 10 in science additionally. Ivan Stanisavljevic was also a great teammate and a strong myth player. Samanyu Dixit wasn't there this year but is still top 10 in ce/geo.

Further shout outs to every quiz bowl player and coach in NC- I really wish there were more in person tournaments so we could have had a better circuit, but I'm glad that we still have something when we easily could have nothing. Best wishes for the future!

Other people I have played who deserve a mention for the player poll:
- Mitchell Shadden is very good, based on experience from HSNCT.
- I'll join the chorus of people saying that Rachel Ezrielev deserves a spot on the literature poll- NASAT is just further proof.
- Andrew Zeng is good at history. Hunter at large is good at everything.
- I know this is a really controversial opinion, but Aadi Karthik probably should be somewhere on the player poll. And every other poll, too.
- Anish Kodali is one of the top literature players in high school right now also.
- There are definitely a lot of other people I am forgetting. Sorry about that.

More nebulous praise to:
- Everyone who has made quiz bowl possible, including but not limited to: parents, coaches, moderators, scorekeepers, tournament organizers, school administrations, and question writers.
- The LHASA people
- People who think my main categories are history or pss; thanks for the optimism, but I still mostly cover ce, geo, and religion.
- Everything that has gotten me a quiz bowl buzz.
- The world. Thanks for being so interesting; you're what makes quiz bowl fun.
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford.
Gemomania
Lulu
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Mar 26, 2020 2:55 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Gemomania »

Here’s some people I’d like to shoutout

I’ll start by shilling some NorCal people

Richard Lin is really, really good at lit and should be somewhere in your t3 lit ballot at the very least. He went 15/36/8 on HARI, 15/22/15 on mRNA, and 14/14/7 on ARCADIA, and the majority of his points come from lit buzzes. I basically didn’t have to pay attention to the lit at nasat because he would buzz on it absurdly early. He’s also good at myth.

Keshav Kumar is one of the best generalists as seen by his 4th place finish at ipnct and should definitely be high up in your overall ballots. He’s the best player in a good NorCal circuit and maybe the best player in the class of ‘23. He didn’t play the full tournaments of ARCADIA and mRNA but put up good p/g at those — his ability to scale while covering so many categories is up there with some of the top generalists.

Anthony Wang is one of the best sci/fa players I’ve faced this year. He dropped a clean 36/33/6 statline on hsnct and was the primary scorer of a t20 Saratoga team. You don’t get that good without a player in that range, and Anthony definitely should be somewhere on your overall poll.

While they may not necessarily be on your ballots, Irvington’s Kaiwen Xiao and Vincent Wang were super solid and underrated this year. They had a strong hsnct run as well.

Moving on from NorCal

Rachel Ezrielev should be on your sophomore ballot and be considered for lit –– they’ve improved a ridiculous amount this year and have become cracked at lit. If there was a Most Improved Player award, it would go to Rachel.

Aiden Dartley threatened me if I didn’t put him on here so this is me saying you should rank him in history and somewhere in your t5 overall. He also did well at nasat, though Ben Hu saved his legacy on the final tossup just like Ray Allen did for LeBron, so maybe he’s not that good.

Sinecio Morales should be considered for your overall as well as fine arts, rmpss, and science. He was able to carve a solid ppg at nasat despite being shadowed heavily on his cats.

Camden Williams should be somewhere on your freshman poll — he had the highest ppg of any freshman at PACE and is emerging as a good generalist.

I’m sure he’ll be ranked but Anish Kodali beat us almost singlehandedly on nasat while going 1-3 in his primary cat (more evidence to vote Richard highly on lit btw). He is both a good generalist and specialist, something only other top players can claim.

Darryl Wang is very good at science and should be in your t3 at the least. Also good at ඞ content.

This is super random but Sam Albury from Southside had some super impressive buzzes across a bunch of different categories and seemed to have a lot of real knowledge about a lot of stuff. I don’t know if he should be on your poll but wanted to shout him out.

Edit: Everyone is sleeping on Max Brodsky, the 18 year old AFA prodigy from New Jersey. He's also a cracked fa player in general, and went 16/0/0 on PACE music. After leading the national powerhouse High Tech High School to 14th at PACE, Max burst onto the nationals scene, going 3-0 in most games on fa. Fine Arts players beware, because Max is going to make the quizbowl fa distribution his stomping grounds, and this Brodsky Btrain is not showing any signs of slowing down.
Also shout out Dan Ni, who was snubbed from science on this year's college science poll.
Last edited by Gemomania on Mon Jun 20, 2022 1:57 pm, edited 4 times in total.
anuttam
sagittarius '22
cal
NotAiden
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:24 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by NotAiden »

Here's a list of players I think deserve some thought:
Rachel Ezelriev is in my opinion one of the top lit players in HS. Rising from playing on novice to being a second scorer on both RM A and Maryland Gold, they've demonstrated themselves to be extremely capable in literature as well as some RMPSS. Anuttam Ramji too is one of the meanest quizbowlers I know, he's also mad good at lit and RMPSS, and both had great performances at PACE. CQAP's canon has drilled good knowledge of both thanks to our collective mentor, James Orefice, who is amazing in his own right.

Darryl Wang and Ben Hu are both mad good at science. Darryl is easily one of, if not, the top bio player in the country, while Ben would be getting buzzes halfway through the tu on stuff I'd never heard of at NASAT. Both insane on sci. Kushal Alaru deserves a shoutout too, for being amazing at bio and physics.

Continuing to shill for the NE, I'd like to bring up Robert Wang, who not only is one of the funniest people in quizbowl but also great at history but a very good generalist, especially on NAQT. Put up a very scary run at HSNCT, beating Carmel.

Also deserving of mention is Sinecio Morales, however reluctant I might be to mention anyone from Illinois. He put up great buzzes in both science and FA in our games against him, and I think deserves recognition for being very good in both categories.

Also, Max Brodsky. Dude is a beast at AFA, going 16/0/0 at PACE somehow, and I think the best FA player in the country, though I was able to take a few VFA off of him.

Also people who I think are cool at quizbowl and deserve mentions but I'm not gonna write about:
Also wanna give shoutouts to Aidan Lim, Will McCurley, AZ Faiz, Lawrence Zhao for being epic generalists, and Andrew Zeng, Stevie Miller, and Nolan Greenways for being great at history. Also wanna give shouts to all my amazing teammates this year: Alex Khalitov, Joonho Oh, Eli Young, Lee Haglid, Ritvik Katta, Marie Kim, Daniel Khalitov, Leo Manwaring, Katrina Eilander, Paul Nasr, Asad Raza, Aditya Rajesh, Connor Yu, Gina Vaynstein, Jonathan Amos, Ryan Cho, Kate Minn, and Zachary Stevens, as well as my former teammates Nick Pruitt and Aum Mundhe. I would also like to give a shoutout to everyone who helped staff Maroon Bowl this year and helped me mitigate a stats disaster, especially the magnate of Long Island quizbowl, Joe Feldman. I really look forward to seeing everyone get better in the next year.
Last edited by NotAiden on Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Aiden Dartley
Ridgewood High School '22
Rutgers '26
User avatar
theLopen
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2020 8:44 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by theLopen »

Anuttam covered the gist of NorCal, but I'll add on some things.

As Anuttam mentioned, Keshav is a super strong player. He mainly covers literature, history, and fine arts, but does well across the board. His teammates Payton Chung (mainly science) and Rajiv Venkatesh (current events) are very good and provided a lot of support; over the course of the season, Homestead notched wins against strong teams like Mira Loma and Hunter, and they did very well at nationals.

Kaiwen and Vincent are a formidable duo. I don't know as much about specific category coverage, but Kaiwen generally covers history and literature, and he also seems to be a generalist; Vincent also gets buzzes across the categories, and he has good math knowledge. Ayush Patel is another good player (science) that people might not know as much about. He didn't play that many tournaments this year besides some of the Cal Cups and HSNCT, but he did well at the tournaments he did play.

I don't think anybody from Mira Loma has been mentioned yet except Aatreyo and Tanay, but everybody there deserves a shout out. Aditya Sivakumar, Aatreyo Bhattacharyya, Arjun Gonuguntla, Tanay Bodducherla, Elyas Nuh, and Shohom Chakraborty are all very good. As a team, Mira Loma is balanced because of everyone's solid science coverage and specialism. I think Mira Loma did have some unlucky nationals, especially at HSNCT, where they had to play Lambert and Buffalo Grove back-to-back in the playoffs; they definitely would've performed much better if their opponents hadn't been so strong.

Anuttam Ramji is strong at literature, philosophy, social science. Even though he's a specialist who's strongest at literature, he gets a lot of buzzes in other categories, especially as the difficulty scales up - he's also good at other academic questions. Anuttam's general knowledge was super helpful for NASAT, and the extent of his general knowledge is also demonstrated by PACE, where he put up a very good solo performance. He's also definitely failing to mention/understating his NASAT literature contribution, because he repeatedly pulled hard parts on bonuses that we would otherwise have 20d, and a lot of the tossups that he didn't get were buzzer races between the two of us.

Adhvaith Ravi is another player (history) who might not be as known, but he did insanely well at NASAT. He got several early buzzes over teams like Maryland Gold and Connecticut and was regularly 20ing and 30ing history bonuses. Adhvaith scales scarily well; from playing with/against him, it's clear he gets exponentially stronger as the set difficulty increases. Also, while this is only anecdotal, he would have gotten several history tossups in the finals matches had we been playing (we were spectating finals as a team).
Richard Lin
Bellarmine '23
Amherst '27
amundhe
Lulu
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Jul 28, 2019 10:08 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by amundhe »

Now that NASAT is over, I'd like to make a case for many of the members of New Jersey to make your polls.

Aiden Dartley led the team in scoring. He's an incredible history player who has performed time and again at tournaments at the Northeast--his most exemplary performance is at Darien Spring, where he contended and beat several of the Northeast's top teams, including an Andrew Zeng-led Hunter (https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7357/). His skill in literature, visual fine arts, parts of biology, and general quizbowl know-how should merit a top 10 spot, if not maybe top 5. He's also been a great teammate to play with during our time together at Ridgewood, and (this is perhaps getting a bit irrelevant from the poll) I'm really proud of him in general for fostering a positive environment within the club--multiple people came up to me at HSNCT and told me how much they loved the Ridgewood team's vibes.

Max Brodsky is, to me, the best music player in the country (see his excellent performance at the open-level AFA set DECAF https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/ ... ividuals/ ) for proof that he scales to literally any difficulty) At PACE, he went 16/0/0 on music. In addition to that, he's great at visual fine arts, and he's good at other fine arts as well (something often neglected when considering FA players). He should definitely be in the top third of your Fine Arts poll for those who don't share my personal belief that he's number one (see his 28 powers at PACE being seven more than the next person) I additionally believe that Max is a top 30 overall player in the country because of performances such as the one he put up at NSC, where he finished with 44 powers, more than anyone bar Aadi, Aiden, and Gabe Forrest.

Benjamin Hu played one quizbowl tournament this year, but his performance at NASAT helped NJ win the title. His biggest strength is undoubtedly in his ability to pull crazy bonus parts, which is a huge reason why NJ A had such high PPB at NASAT. While his lack of consistent performances throughout the year is an understandable reason to not considering him, it is apparent to anyone watching him how good he is, and he definitely merits a spot at the middle of your science poll. Ben actually outscored Max in the playoffs of NASAT, so he's legitimately at a nationally great level when it comes to science.

Kushal Aluru should be ranked very similarly to Ben Hu (a bit better or a bit worse, depending on how you view tossup vs bonus and consistency throughout the year). Kushal's exceptional strength in science, particularly biology, helped J.P. Stevens play well better than preseason expectations, winning Princeton's PHSAT. He had 17 science powers at PACE this year, around the same number as Connor, Alan, and Pratyush. While I don't think he's as good at bonuses as Ben, Kushal has a very good ability to get tossups against even very strong teams; he went 4/2/1 against DCC at Prison Bowl only losing that game by a single tossup (see https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7 ... ushalAluru for his Prison Bowl statline). He also led NJ B in scoring at NASAT.

Robert Wang did a huge amount of scoring in leading a shorthanded Livingston team to t-10 at HSNCT, which is insane. He also was able to solo win both the JV National History Bowl and win the JV National History Bee. While I'm hesitant to definitively say that a JV performance merits a spot as a top-10 history player in the country (although it definitely merits consideration), I can confidently say that he's in the top 5 freshmen of the year, and perhaps higher than that.

I think I've outlined why I think the above individuals from NJ should be on basically everyone's ballots. Besides them, I think East Brunswick's Tanuj Chandekar has consistent strength in history which merits consideration. Ranvith Adulla's ability to score points on a High Tech team where he is heavily shadowed by Max, who covers the exact same categories as him, is also worth consideration. Nishanth Bhargava's contributions, particularly in PSS, made a huge impact on the NJ A team, though he's not quite good enough at RM to have earned top 10 in RMPSS.

He's not really been mentioned Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt should definitely be in your top 30 overall players and top 10 history players for his ability to lead Hunter to high rankings and tournament placings even while Andrew didn't play the first half of the year. And this is really random considering my Northeast focus, but Austin Guo's FA skill was very apparent in the Livingston-Carmel game at HSNCT that seemingly half the Northeast spectated, and he deserves votes in the FA poll.
Aum Mundhe
Ridgewood HS '21
Rutgers '25
Nhat
Kimahri
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:20 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Nhat »

Thank you Cole for making this Player Appreciation Thread.

First, I would like to shill

Code: Select all

Drew Laroo
[/u][/i][/b]. The amount of respect on Drew Laroo is not nearly enough. People always talk about how Rohan Ganeshan studies for quizbowl 3 hours a day. However, you guys do not know that Drew Laroo studies for quizbowl for 24 hours a day. There is no stopping in studying for him. He is probably the best history, current events, geography, literature, science, fine arts, and rmpss player in this country. In addition, his ability to buzz with the Hartung method makes all of this possible. His buzzer speed makes the speed of light jealous. In present, he is probably the best player (at quizbowl) to live. I surely hope he hates the university of Michigan and is enamored by the fact that I (Nhat Tong) is going to Tamu and will transfer there to play quizbowl with me.

One more player I would like to shill is

Code: Select all

[*]Ali Hamzeh
[/u][/i][/b] for the freshman and overall poll. Ali is probably the best player at Kinkaid right now. Hsnct was his second and third tournament respectably. He had an infinite more powers than his mid teammate Cole at hsnct. I am also shilling him because he says his dream team is tamu (which is also my dream school). He is very good in the categories of Religious Lit, English Lit, World Lit, Kid Lit, Math Pencil, Math Paper, Math Theory, Phyiscs, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Rocks, Computer Science, North American Visual Art, South American Visual Art, Antarctican Art, African Art, Asian Art, Europe Art, Compoers, Jazz, Opera Dance, Theater, Ballet, American History, European History, World History, Ancient History, Geography, Myth, Pop Culture, Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, Cricket, Film, Video Games, Musicals, Comics, Social Science, Current Events. With this information, he should be ranked behind Drew Laroo on the overall poll and first in all the category polls and higher than Aadi K and Rohan G in the overall poll. However, the one thing that is bad is that he can improve in the category of Australian Art.

also my teammates are alright too
kile knows some lit.
Nhat Tong
straje Kesuit 2022
Tamu 2026
Rohangeo
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:05 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Rohangeo »

Hey all, since NASAT is over I wanted to make a couple of shills regarding some people I played with and people I played against.

First of all, if Ben Hu is not ranked top 5 or top 10 in your science poll, something is wrong. Probably the best specialist on that ridiculously good New Jersey team (Max Brodsky could make a case there) and had some absolutely clutch science buzzes on a difficult set.

Secondly, Max Brodsky is probably your best fine arts player of the year (especially AFA). I am continuously amazed on how he is able to get so many early buzzes on ridiculously hard content when I am trying to figure out what the question is asking.

Third, Aiden Dartley is a top-5 player of the year and a top-10 history specialist, no questions needed. The top scorer on the New Jersey team, he plays so accurately with a Get/Neg ratio that is mind-bogglingly good. Oh yeah, he also singlehandedly beat TJ at HSNCT.

I'll turn to some of my teammates now.

Charles Young is a t-15 overall player and a t-10 FA/Lit specialist. Just go look at his NASAT stats against some highly specialized NASAT teams. If that isn't enough, I don't know what is. He was also a major reason why IL Blue's PPB was consistently near 20 on NASAT, picking apart the FA/Lit and even some history bonuses like nothing.

Sinecio Morales is probably the most underrated RMPSS and Science (and even FA) player in the country. Like, seriously he's so good its insane. He deserves to be top 10 for at least one of those lists. Please, do not under rank him.

Rohan Kher is a top-5 Sophomore for sure. If he's not in the top 5, something is seriously wrong. Look at his HSNCT and PACE stats, where he almost equaled the stats of his teammate, Charles Young. He's also a bloody good history specialist.

Some others I'd like to shill.

Gabe Forrest is a t-10 player in the country, a t-10 RMPSS player, and a t-10 FA player with his otherworldly VFA skills. Look at his NASAT stats. Missouri beat NJ A and NC in prelims, and in those games, Gabe time and time again was clutch and locked his categories down.

Braxton Davis is a t-10 Freshman. When people are struggling to learn photosynthesis as a freshman, Braxton is out there powering PACE questions cluing tetrahedral complexes in inorganic chemistry. Like, WHAT?!

And finally, Aadi Karthik from Lambert is undeniably the best player of the year. Please don't under rank him (2 is under ranking him, by the way). Vishal Sareddy, his teammate, Max Yang from Ladue, and Rishabh Wuppalapati from Stevenson are also top-5 geography players (not sure if there is a poll for that but it deserves to be brought up).

Thanks to everyone for a fantastic year of High School Quizbowl, I can't wait for next year!!!
Rohan Ganeshan

Quest Academy '20, Buffalo Grove HS '24
Serpentine284
Lulu
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon Jan 27, 2020 10:05 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Serpentine284 »

If y'all are looking to put some Wayzata people on your ballot (as you should be), Nathan Wu has a case for top 30 overall this year (look at his stats, they're really good). Additionally, Emily Liu has a case to be on the top 10 science ballot. She is, by far, the best biology player in the country and it's not even close.

But I think everyone here has been sleeping on my boy Anuk Dias. Anuk is easily the best player I've played with, both in and out of the room. Whenever I play him in scrimmages, I consistently get beaten 900-0 and they're not even buzzer races. One time, he literally buzzed after the words "this man" and said "Ambrose of Milan" and got it right. Side note, I don't know why RAFT III decided to toss that up, but that's not my business. Anuk is so good at science that he literally chooses not to buzz on it in order to give other teams a fighting chance. However, he will show no such mercy when it comes to literature. Legend has it that after meditating on Mount Meru for 10 years as a child, the angel Jibril came down and gave him the Book of Sand, which he promptly carded over the next few minutes. Since then, he has never been beaten on any literature question that he has gotten correct. Also, he plays the saxophone, which not only makes him incredible at Quiz Bowl jazz, but also the sexiest saxophone player since Bill Clinton. The only reason that Wayzata lost HSNCT this year was because Anuk started lagging in real life due to his terrible Wifi connection. Outside of the game, Anuk also has his merits, as he single-handedly saved Wayzata High School from demolition by breaking the wrecking ball with his bare fists. In his spare time, he also saves starving puppies and founded the Plymouth branch of the Red Cross. If you aren't ranking him first on your polls, you clearly don't touch any sliver of grass.
Amogh Kulkarni
Wayzata 2018-2021
Chicago 2021-2023
GSU 2023-2025
User avatar
Tridwoxi
Lulu
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2019 9:24 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Tridwoxi »

It has been a thrilling year of playing this illustrious game of Qwib Ball for me, and I'm looking forward to playing and talking with people next year!

I am biased in favor of the following people (because I like them), but I would like to shill them as friendly people and players who I believe should go on your polls. I almost certainly forgot some people though.

Aalok Bhattacharya [Overall] is quite good at this game and may be able to jump onto the lower sections of the Overall poll. Also a friendly and super-helpful person!

Aditya Sharma [Science, Overall] is a enjoyable person to talk to and the leading scorer on Raleigh Charter. He's good at this game—at NASAT, for instance, he put up nearly 30ppg for his state of North Carolina, which placed 4th.

Cooper Roh [History, Overall] is very good at history and other subjects—he carried Team CT at NASAT. He's also funny yet controlled and encouraging; I would love to have a person like him as my captain.

Jason Qin [Fine Arts] is a great person to be around and an excellent fine arts player. At Summer Duos, he powered afa in every round to go 9/0/0 on that subcat and drop an insane 22/1/1 Fine Arts statline with more Fine Arts powers than Teigue Kelly and Gabe Forrest's Fine Arts powers combined to carry us to third.

Joy An [RMPSS] has first-lined not one, but two mythology questions at NASAT despite only hearing 7 rounds of questions. They're also incredibly kind to those they interact with.

Lukas Koutsoukos [Overall] is a generalist that sometimes beats teams like Darien nearly solo and puts up 87.50ppg at HSNCT to be 9th prelim scorer.

Richard Lin [Literature] is super fun to talk to and by far the best literature player I have ever played with and certainly one of the best literature players this year. Even back in January, on difficult sets like ARCADIA, he went 11/9/3 on Literature, with as many powers as the next two best players on lit combined. Rank highly!

Shiva Tegulla [Science] is also a top-tier specialist, this time in science. He's way better than me at organic chemistry and I enjoy playing his questions (which he writes quite a lot of—seeing him writing this week's Beterword was a pleasant surprise). See also DART II catstats, where he goes 19/7/7 on Science to outscore players of the caliber of Alan Xie and Aadi Karthik on Science.

Sinecio Morales [Fine Arts, Overall] has improved tremendously this year, especially in Literature, yet is still strongest in his core subjects of Fine Arts, RMPSS, and Science. He studies a great deal and it shows—go look at his stats where he drops over 5p/g on Regs+ sets or put up wins against Uni Lab, Belmont, and RM on WORKSHOP with minimal (but certainly not ignorable!) support.

A shill for myself: I generally did well at HSNCT, Prison Bowl, and ARCADIA, though despite multiple first- and second-line correct answers, I frequently negged myself out at NASAT. Also, does Beterword count? I outbuzzed Eric Mukherjee to 10/20 questions on Shiva's science packet, though it was intended to be at an accessible ACF Fall-difficulty.

I will now move on to science players I do not know:

Aadi Karthik, Pratyush Jaishanker, Connor Blake, and Alan Xie have very deservedly been mentioned and are well-known so I will skip over them here, though they should still be ranked very highly (because they are very good!)

Aidan Lim [Science, Overall] is very good at science and outright beat me to a physics tossup at NASAT. I am told they are also a strong generalist.

Daniel Shneider [Science, Overall] is a science-based player that may be able to jump onto polls with strong overall statlines at lower levels and 3 science powers on WORKSHOP. Considering he got 5 additional non-science powers on that set, he may be ranked for Overall too.

Shreyas Singh [Science] seems to be quite good—just look at their Dart II catstats where they place ahead of many good players and only behind Shiva.

Lawrence Zhao [Science], also from Uni Lab, is also quite good! I don't know their stats well, but another player pointed them out to me and I will consider them for a poll.

As catstats tend to be difficult to find, I will link what I mentioned here:

Arcadia https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 6jaNA/edit
Summer Duos https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... gXZOY/edit
Dart II https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Q4pN8/edit
Workshop https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... R-hDA/edit

I will miss our wonderful seniors and friends Michael and Evan next year, but the future can still be bright for Quiz Bowl. May the season never end! :party:
Last edited by Tridwoxi on Tue Jun 21, 2022 7:56 am, edited 4 times in total.
Darryl Wang
Darien High School '23
krbm17
Lulu
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:39 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by krbm17 »

i’ll shill a couple of northeast people i find cool, hunter and otherwise.

not like this is new news or anything, but andrew zeng is very good at quizbowl. very. he led two shorthanded hunter teams to 2nd and 5th at both nationals this year and had a fantastic regular season as well. at pace he was one of only 4 players to break 50 powers and at hsnct he had 59 (5th in the field), all while backed up by significant support, especially in his best category of history; jacob hardin-bernhardt and ian lu are both fantastic history players and generalists in their own right. i think his regular season dominance is best highlighted by his performance at darien spring (on the newt set), where he put up a monstrous 88 powers in 10 games (including a game where he took two and very nearly all three fine arts tossups off of max brodsky, the clear-cut number one fa player in the country in my eyes). not that it matters much, but he did that on <1 hour of sleep. he should be at the top of your history ballots or very close (see his nhbb results) and should be on your lit and fa ballots as well. personally, i have andrew third on my overall ballot but any reasonable ballot should rank him in the top 5 or 6, i’d say.

the aforementioned jacob hardin-bernhardt and ian lu remain fantastic players; jacob has taken his generalism to a new level this year by picking up literature very well (while still maintaining fantastic depth in history and geography and maybe being the best ce player in the country) and ian once again displayed tremendous scaling ability at pace (especially in history but across the distribution as well), where he racked up 32 powers and 87 ppg. they should both get votes for history and maybe overall, not sure.

hunter's daniel shneider might be the most underrated science player in the country; he’s barely played this season but has done very well when he has. at workshop mainsite, he put up over a power a game next to andrew primarily as a science player. he led the field in science powers, but also had some nuts buzzes in art. especially in biology, he scales crazy well and though he perhaps hasn’t played enough to be ranked, i wanted to give him a shoutout.

hunter’s other seniors (amanda li, aruna das, and nick wu) are maybe not quite ballot-worthy but i wanted to shout them out for being absolutely amazing at music, literature, and trash/geography, respectively. if any of the hunter seniors are reading this, thank you for being incredible leaders and role models and people and i’ll miss you all endlessly. go tear it up at college :)

aiden dartley of ridgewood has capped off his tremendous improvement with an absolutely remarkable final season of high school quizbowl. with the exception of hsnct, he’s been top scorer at every tournament he’s played this season. including pace. he had the second-most powers of anyone at pace (no prizes for guessing who was first) and had a crazy regular season too; see his 10 p/g performance on raft or any regular season tournament, really. he’s one of the best players i’ve ever played against, getting insane powers literally anywhere, but especially history. i think that’s still his best category? rank him very, very highly for history and also lit and fa i think idk. he’s good.

darryl wang is the best science player i’ve played this year and probably the best in the country. people have very rightfully shilled him already; read what they said. he is cracked.

robert wang is the best freshman in the northeast. he had a very good regular season and then followed it up by proving it on the highest level at nhbb nats and hsnct, where he carried his team to tenth place, with impressive wins against the likes of carmel. vote him for history; he’s absolutely cracked at it.

other northeast people i’ll shoutout and you should consider voting for even though i’m too tired to give them their own blurbs: cindy gao from belmont, kushal aluru and nishanth bhargava from jp stevens, joy an from choate, lukas koutsoukos from wilton, aalok bhattacharya from staples, anish kodali of great valley, and az faiz of manheim township. to those i did and did not shout out, thank you all for an incredible season and i can’t wait for the next one. nestomp now and always.
Last edited by krbm17 on Fri Sep 02, 2022 12:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
Matthew Kohn
Hunter College High School '24
Williams College '28
adsharma
Kimahri
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2020 9:20 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by adsharma »

Here are some players I've known and played with who I do feel should be on these polls.

Darryl Wang (Darien HS, Connecticut): In my opinion Darryl is almost certainly the number 1 science player in the country. Darryl has been putting up incredible performances throughout the year, and while his strongest subcat is certainly in cell bio, he scales so strongly in all science. Darryl's strong science specialism had him being top scorer on his very strong team and led them to a top 24 placing at HSNCT. In addition, Darryl swept the science off of Pratyush at HSNCT, who was voted #1 science in the poll last year. Darryl's just an insanely strong science player who is likely the best science player in the country.

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill High School, NC): BMB is just absolutely nutty, leading ECHHS to 3rd place at HSNCT and NC NASAT to 5th. He is almost certainly a top generalist, who is really strong and has deep real knowledge in basically every category, although he seems to be strongest in "Other academic" and RMPSS. I genuinely can't see BMB being ranked anywhere below 10th place on your overall polls.

Chinmay Talikoti (Enloe High School, NC): Chinmay is a really strong History player who, despite not playing in many tournaments this year, has frequently shown the ability to make great buzzes at a high level. At NASAT, Chinmay went 5/0 against Cooper Roh and again went 5/0 against Stevie Miller. I think Chinmay might be deserving of a spot on the history polls, and maybe one on the generalist polls too, though I'm not sure how competitive the history polls are this year.

Sinecio Morales (Rockford Auburn HS, Illinois): Sinecio is an incredibly strong FA player and a very strong generalist as well, scaling high in basically every category, and has been putting up great numbers throughout the year. He placed as the 9th overall player at PACE while playing alongside his very good teammate Alex Crowell, leading me to believe he deserves a spot in the top 30 players and in the top 10 FA players as well.

Rachel Ezrielev (Richard Montgomery HS, Maryland): Rachel is an insane literature specialist. Rachel put up a bit over 1 power per game at both HSNCT and PACE, which is a remarkable performance. Rachel certainly deserves a spot on your literature ballots and could possibly get a spot on your sophomore polls too.

Jason Qin (IMSA, Illinois): Jason has been popping off at FA in his tournaments but is very good at Physics as well. Jason was the top scorer on ISMA's HSNCT and PACE squads, which is remarkable given the sheer amount of talent on that team. I believe Jason should be getting a high spot on your FA polls.

Shiva Tegulla (SCP, Florida): Shiva is a really great science player from Florida. He's been putting strong performances on at the tournaments he's gone to this year, including at Arcadia, DART II, Delta Burke, and at HSNCT.

Allie Hoffert (Northfield, Minnesota): Allie is really good at literature and is an EXTREMELY good myth player. Allie was also in the top 15 players at HSNCT despite her strong specialism, which is really crazy. Allie is definitely deserving of a spot in the top 10 sophomores.

I don't want to really shill myself, but I think I may be in contention for a spot on the science polls, based on some of my science stats at DART II (placed 3rd), LUKA (1st at sci), Protean Challenge (4th). In addition, I did decently well at NASAT, putting up around 28 ppg basically only on science while playing alongside notably good science player Bo Chi.

Last of all, I want to thank all the players, and everyone who worked to quiz bowl fun and fair this year. You guys are the best and I hope we come back as just as strong next year with all the great seniors graduating this year. Thanks for a great season of quiz bowl everyone!
Aditya Sharma

RCHS '23
User avatar
chartong
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:52 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by chartong »

I know this is my own post, but I figured I'd throw my own hat into the ring and shout out some people on my team + a few others who haven't already been mentioned above.

my own team:

Connor Blake is obviously great at science; about half of his 42 powers at PACE and probably near the same amount at HSNCT came from the category, but I think he's underrated at other categories like lit and fine arts, as well as a bunch of random general knowledge that definitely came in handy for PACE. Consider him for the top of your science poll, but also near the top of your overall poll.
Vedul Palavajjhala is probably the best individual on our team despite having lower power numbers than Connor. His racking ability is unparalleled within the circuit (and I mean that in a good way); he's able to get clutch tens out of category as much as he powers with his deep knowledge in lit, rmpss, and fa, which is a huge factor in what allowed kinkaid to make a 4th place run at hsnct without history coverage. A good choice for your overall and rmpss polls for sure.
Ali Hamzeh is probably one of the most improved players i've met. As far as I'm aware, he was introduced to quiz bowl around march of this year and started studying around april, and yet he still is one of the deepest players i've met in literature, science and mythology... and he's only a freshman (HSNCT was his second tournament ever)! I think it was stated earlier, but he's probably the biggest victim of the shadow effect this year, so y'all better watch out for next year :twisted:
I (cole hartung) don't really like to "toot my own horn", but I feel like i should be in consideration for the top of your history poll; i obviously wasn't at hsnct (thanks covid :( ) but at pace our team had the highest history ppb by a good amount and i was the top individual for history according to category statistics, but I also managed to get around 1 power a game from lit, fa, and other general knowledge. consider me for sophomore and history polls.

other people:

vishal sareddy is a very impressive individual that is unfortunately shadowed by the most impressive individual. he put up respectable stats next to aadi at pace and hsnct but on his own is capable of winning tournaments solo. it is very infuriating playing vishal and watching him get random questions off of his unparalleled geography knowledge
though many people are touting max brodsky as the best fine arts player this year, i still think grant maiorana should be in the conversation. he has real knowledge in afa from his vast cello (and show choir) experience, which allows him to be a menace on score clues which half the playerbase can't even begin to figure out. also his generalism in some categories (like geo) and his leadership as a captain helped solon make impressive runs at both hsnct and pace.
aaryan sagar, and really the whole of cinco ranch, are certainly worth mentioning. cinco had to deal with losing their history/pss player for the whole year but still managed to pull good results (10th at hsnct!) due in no small part to aaryan's deep lit knowledge as well as general knowledge in a breadth of categories.
rohan ganeshan had an unfortunate hsnct but is still one of the top individuals out there (in my opinion only second to aadi) while only being in tenth grade. he's able to power pretty much every category (especially lit and fa). the next two years will not be fun for any quiz bowler looking to challenge him.
Cole Hartung
kinkaid '24

"You ruined quiz bowl for millions of innocent players" - Arthur Gayden

Suetonius states that Titus, upon realizing he had brought no benefit to anyone during a whole day, remarked "Friends, I have lost a day".
alisony.9
Lulu
Posts: 14
Joined: Thu May 07, 2020 9:53 am

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by alisony.9 »

procrastinating, so i'll take a moment to shill. i'm too lazy to find stats (cult of ppg anyways) so most of my thoughts will be anecdotal -- i'm also not super tuned into the national circuit, so this will mostly be shoutouts for the lovely teammates i played nationals with + georgia/the South

rahul natraj, although he has an unfortunate tendency to pick the wrong end of 50/50s (i.e., somehow he always chooses reduction when the answer is oxidation), is goated at earth/ocean/other science. if trash were a category on the poll, he would definitely be one of the top players in that too -- i can recall tournaments where he didn't drop a single trash tossup.

jonah turner has a great attitude all the time and is genuinely one of the most positive people i've ever met. he knows the most random things that can only be described as tangential-geo-and-other-history-niche that thusly makes him amazing on naqt. if you get into a conversation with him about trains (or transportation in general) though, be careful, because he may end up talking about them for over an hour.

zach tseng is a fantastic fine arts player (especially on visual, but he hates musicals and film), and you'll sometimes see him firstlining questions after singing the score clue out loud. he also knows more about the bible than anyone i know and frequently beats christian schools on religion tossups.

kyunghwan lim is also cracked at fa and lit. he's especially good at russian longfic and british poetry (which i am bad at, so hurray!) and genuinely loves music (he listens to mahler symphonies and quirky contemporary chinese music for fun :shock: )

although everyone above is great, i'd like to especially shill zach and kyunghwan for your fine arts poll -- zach's stats are already above somehwere, and kyunghwan's pace/reinstein stuff should speak for his scaling ability. also, both of them are actually goated at playing their instruments (violin and clarinet, respectively), so that should count for something, right??

charles heydt (midtown, formerly grady): freshman poll. as far as i know, he covers sci, some lit?, but is also a generalist. midtown has given us a run for our money multiple times this year (see vandy abc), and charles has been a big part of that despite being a freshman.

all of lambert: do i really need to explain this one lmao

edit: also want to add that rohan leveille (paideia), robbie magnuson (southside, sc), and sreeraaghav, antonio, shiva, and param/log (stanton college prep, fl) are also awesome, though i don't know too much about them stat-wise.

also, kyunghwan wanted me to shoutout his youtube channel/pace vlog. watch at your own risk

finally, thank you to everyone (staffers, mods, admin, orgs, players) for making this activity fun for the last 4 years :')
Last edited by alisony.9 on Fri Jun 24, 2022 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
alison yau
she/her
chattahoochee 22 & penn 26
:bees:
raj.gosain13
Kimahri
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:32 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by raj.gosain13 »

That man Shawn Meng is one bad fellow. His fine arts skills are definitely top 10 in the nation (mans was putting on a clinic at PACE) and is overall a great generalist. The rest of our team is buns, but he really carried us. We really only achieved our wildest dreams because of his deep proficiency in fine arts. His instincts are top-notch, and he has a terrific feel for the game.

Also, Keshav Kumar is with the goods.
Raj Gosain
White Station '22
User avatar
nickdai
Wakka
Posts: 113
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2020 10:36 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by nickdai »

If I were to submit a ballot (which I will not because I am too detached from non-SoCal circuits), here are a few SoCal-ers that would be on my ballot.

Amogh Kulkarni and Ryan Sun from Arcadia don't need much explanation from me - they're clearly top in every ballot (except the sophomore and freshmen ballot of course).

Claire Wang from Canyon Crest A is actually really good and definitely belongs on your freshmen ballot. I didn't expect her to be the breakout player from the team, but her stats have been phenomenal. This CCA team has actually fallen off so hard chiefly due to Andrew Gao's retirement and Leo Gu's attempts at challenging my neg record (you'll never surpass me, at Westview we peaked with 4.7 negs/game and at UCSD we've peaked at 6.2 negs/game). But she is very good and put up incredible stats against some of the top teams like Kinkaid, and I truly believe that next year they can make a deep run with Chris Jung and Claire Wang forming a core (and perhaps with support from Yaj Jhajhria and Andrew Tsui). I know I say this every year, but CCA should be on everyone's watch list next year.

Other honorable mentions from SoCal:

Kethan Raman is very good. He's truly succeeded Josh Xu in every way possible and led Santa Monica to be very successful this year. Other than Arcadia and Nate Kang, he's definitely the next best individual player in SoCal. He and Alexandra Ralphing (Santa Monica's literature player) along with some newer supporting players put up 24.6 PPB on IS-206, which is incredibly impressive and definitely the best team performance in SoCal that is not Arcadia.

Nathaniel Kang from St. Maragaret's did not play at either nationals, but he still put up incredible stats.

Conner Feng from Del Norte could probably break top 10 sophomores if this was any other year where the competition was lower, but he is also very good. He's probably competing with Richard Lin for the title of best player in SoCal next year.

Richard Lin was the intended successor for Westview A, and he more or less performed to expectations. While Westview has unfortunately fallen off in recruitment and retention (dropping from being one of the largest clubs in the circuit to sending a shorthanded team to HSNCT), Richard Lin has still carried on that torch of leading the club to success at smaller tournaments (also quick shoutout to Rahul Jogadhenu for stepping up and taking a club leadership role). I am a little sad at the heights Westview has fallen compared to the previous trend of never finishing at a National's below 34th place, but that doesn't mean I'm not incredibly proud of our team at HSNCT (I very much am!) and I have great hopes for the future of the club as hopefully this season (and perhaps multiple future seasons) of rebuilding will allow for very strong teams in the future.

Wow I didn't write a long paragraph talking about Westview for once. I'll save that for next year. I don't care how old I am, I will continue to shill for WVQB no matter what.
Nicholas "Nicc" Dai
戴若涵

Westview High School '21
University of California, San Diego '25
User avatar
king_crimson
Lulu
Posts: 31
Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2019 9:04 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by king_crimson »

have a couple ppl/teams i would like to shill

elle lee has definitely been a monumental part of our success this season. they're amazing at visual arts (they firstlined a lot of vfa at pace and powered vfa against top-college teams at mrna, like uva a). all of their performances on difficult sets (mrna, pace nsc, hsnct) were quite impressive. they've definitely helped skyrocket us 3 rusty seniors to great placements at both nationals. they're also extremely good at a lot of general knowledge questions + literature (they got 5 literature powers at pace this year while being shadowed which was super impressive) - i have no qualms with saying that they'll lead tj a next year with success.

griffin reid from glasgow was really really good when we played glasgow, had some really clean buzzes and bonus conversions. not sure if top10 lit but i think top30 overall wouldn't be unfair

josh wants me to shill gokulan anand and he's definitely top5 at lit and vfa. i haven't played him this year but he did carry greenhill to a top15 finish at hsnct as a lead scorer of lit+vfa

arcadia was amazing as a whole and would have definitely beat us h2h 9/10 times - they got unlucky at hsnct and didn't attend pace, but personally i think they are top3, if not top2 (above us possibly) - amogh kulkarni (the not college one) and ryan sun are obviously insane but also brian lam did a really good job getting clutch buzzes. amogh's super underrated at lit too - probably t3-5 in that regard and like is probably t1/t2 history and t5-6 science. vote ryan t10 in lit and history and fa.

kapil nathan is history. enough said.
Last edited by king_crimson on Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Justin Chen
Langley HS 2018-2019
TJHSST 2022
permanently retired
Iago'sFriendly5thCousin
Kimahri
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Aug 17, 2020 8:42 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by Iago'sFriendly5thCousin »

I'm majorly bored and just found this so I'm just gonna write a short post about players who have impressed me this year but haven't really been mentioned a lot previously.

Freshmen:
Although Deven Hagen hasn't played much this year, he had a strong HSNCT performance and is t5 froshes imo. He was the leading scorer on a t-7 HSNCT team! His only real problem is negs, but he is still a strong hist+ce player who can generalize relatively well at high levels. He's decent at science also, but gets shadowed alot by his teammates.

Tate Osborne is a good generalist who performed well at HSNCT. He is quite strong in literature and should be ranked 6-8 on the frosh poll. He is primarily a literature/fa specialist with baseline knowledge in other areas; he doesn't really have any major weaknesses, which allowed him to almost single handedly carry a team to a 5-5 record (commendable for a freshman lol).

Although I (Charles Heydt) have not studied a ton of qb this year, I believe that my HSNCT performance (18/36/14, 40+ ppg) and my other performances throughout the year should merit a t-10 ranking on the freshman poll. This year, I have gotten quite good at science (particularly chemistry and some physics+math) by virtue of studying for classes/olympiads/AP exams while retaining proficiency in other areas (I'm decent at lit and fa, although not great) which increased my powers and dropped my neg count. It's worth noting that I also have a lot of "real" sci knowledge and that once I learn how to apply what I know to quizbowl, I should be a pretty high-tier sci player. Anyways, I should probably be on the bottom half of your frosh ballot.

Other ppl:
Sam Albury is probably the best sci specialist I've played this year, although no one seems to talk about him. He was in my IPNCT room and he was out first (before players such as Cooper Roh, Arthur Gayden, and Cole Hartung) and first/second lined nearly every science tossup he heard on a very hard ICT set. He also had a strong pace performance as well. I haven't really played a lot of people outside of ga this year so I'm not going to make an overall poll or any category polls, but I think he should probably be on the science poll.

So this is what I think and I don't really want to write that much more, but it's been fun this year. Also I threw this together in roughly 20 minutes so don't clown on me for this
Charles Heydt (he/him)
Howard MS (2019-2021)
Midtown HS ('25)
GA Tech Math Dual Enrollment Student (2022-??)

Science and "random things I happen to know" player

Outside of QB I do:
Chem oly
Math/Physics for Fun
Math and Chem Tutoring (gotta plug my tutoring on this forum that nobody even looks at :grin:)

Contact: Russia'sGreatestLoveMachine#2636 (discord)
I check discord like once every 2-3 days
User avatar
etotheipi
Lulu
Posts: 79
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:13 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by etotheipi »

so I realized I forgot to make a shill post which is horrible because there are some people/teams who really deserve shouting out. Hopefully I'm not too late.

We'll start with the shameless self-promotion. I think Lambert should be a serious contender for #1 team of the year. You already know that we won PACE or something, but what I'd like to point out is that we also had highest PPG, P/G, and PPB of any team, at both nationals.

Part of this is because Vishal Sareddy is so damn good at quizbowl. Not only did Vishal put up 35 PPG at PACE and 30 PPG at HSNCT playing with me - we basically do the same categories at this point and also I am notably a pretty high-neg player (and PACE history is good for me compared to that of other sets) - he put up good power stats on other sets like WORKSHOP (against a college field!) and MRNA VACCINE. He is quite obviously a top history specialist and should definitely contend for top 5 on that poll, but is also an underrated generalist (can buzz in basically every category except for some sci things) and should be in your top 30 easily. But he doesn't card, so maybe not.

Singapore American (AKA Legation School) should very easily be in your top 30 teams - PACE shows this. Do not forget them because they are not in the American circuit.

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford is still one of the most underrated individual players in quizbowl.

Finally, just because he did not play PACE, make sure you don't forget to put Rohan Ganeshan in first or second place on your player poll (yes, first - he's that good). Remember that he was first in HSNCT prelim powers. Remember also that Buffalo Grove played HSNCT without being full, and rank them as a top ten team. My top five would still be (in some to-be-decided order) us, TJ, Kinkaid, Arcadia, and Hunter, but Buffalo Grove should definitely be in the next tier.

One last thing: absolutely do not underrate top specialists on your poll. If I were building a team from scratch, I'd rather have Justin Chen, Cole Hartung, or Darryl Wang than most non-top-five generalists; I know that's not what the poll is supposed to measure, and that generalism is difficult in its own way (I still maintain, as someone who is both a top specialist and generalist, that it's significantly more difficult to become a top, say, literature player than to just card all the stock in every category - this is also why I think P/G, especially on hard sets, is a very good stat [well, relatively speaking], and PPG is... not), but still put them towards the top of your 10-20 range.

And one last last thing: do not forget to rank highly teams like Montgomery Blair or the above-mentioned Buffalo Grove that did not play either nationals full.
Arya Karthik (they)

Lambert HS, 2018-22
Georgia Tech, 2022-24
St. Catherine's College, Oxford, 2024-25

2022 PACE NSC; 2023 ACF Nationals
User avatar
chartong
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:52 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by chartong »

Since I have not received many responses for either of the polls (and none at all for the team poll!), I have decided to extend the deadline for rankings. You will now have until July 16th to rank your top 30 individuals and top 30 teams. Reminder that while I highly encourage you to complete every ranking for the individual poll, it is not required.

The original post has been updated to reflect this change.
Cole Hartung
kinkaid '24

"You ruined quiz bowl for millions of innocent players" - Arthur Gayden

Suetonius states that Titus, upon realizing he had brought no benefit to anyone during a whole day, remarked "Friends, I have lost a day".
User avatar
CPiGuy
Auron
Posts: 1070
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 8:19 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by CPiGuy »

One last thing: absolutely do not underrate top specialists on your poll. If I were building a team from scratch, I'd rather have Justin Chen, Cole Hartung, or Darryl Wang than most non-top-five generalists
Big second here -- IMO quizbowl is a team game and so the best way to rank players is by how much they contribute to a team and not necessarily who would win in a 1v1. My personal philosophy for player polls is to imagine that I am participating in the quizbowl draft and consider what my "draft board" for the first pick would look like.

Also while I'm here I would like to point out some things I noticed from the NSC category stats (which I hadn't seen when I did my previous post):

-- Cindy Gao had more p/g on lit at NSC than Justin Chen. Those two should be 1-2 on your lit ballots in some order. Gabe Forrest also went an absolutely ridiculous 23/23 on lit (over like, 64 lit questions); I know his best category is VFA but he should be ranked very highly on lit too.

-- Cole Hartung has a very good claim to be the best history player, having put up 21 powers at NSC, around 30% more than anyone else.

-- Alan Xie is really good at science. Kushal Aluru has not been mentioned here much but is also really good at science.

-- I can't remember if there's a myth ballot specifically but if there is Aeres Zhou should be on it, and if not consider him for RMPSS in general.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
User avatar
chartong
Lulu
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:52 pm

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread

Post by chartong »

Hello all,

Unfortunately, the poll did not receive enough legitimate responses for me to be able to compile actual results (~5 real player polls and only 2 team polls), but I feel like the same result was achieved because everybody flexed about the players they thought were good in this thread anyways.

Here is a sheet containing the legitimate responses if anyone is curious about those.

Finally, I'd like to give out some of my own, very objective awards since we could not actually determine the top players (according to the polls)

Top Troll Award

This award is given to the best troll ballot (in my opinion)

Congratulations to Aiden Domborsky of Hoover High for receiving this award. Thanks for making me feel the Nath that hard. I was simply unprepared for Kapil's dominance.

Self Promotion Award

This award is given to the player who performed the most shameless self-promotion within this thread and during general comparison/discussion

Congratulations to Darryl Wang of Darien High for receiving this award. Darryl had no shortage of things to say about his prowess in the category of Science, to the extent to where it got pretty irritating, truthfully.

Control+C - Control+V Award

This award is given to the ballot which contained the same thing copy-pasted the most times.

Congratulations to Vedul Palavajjhala of Kinkaid / WUSTL for receiving this award. Vedul copy-pasted Ali Hamzeh's name over 200 times, thus giving himself carpal tunnel syndrome for a very good cause.

The Void Award

This award is given to the ballot with the most blank fields.

Congratulations to Ethan Feldman of Solon High for receiving this award. He only filled out the science poll, therefore leaving ~150 fields blank.

And I think it's worth mentioning that Aadi Karthik was pretty much unanimously considered the best player this year since they led their team to the PACE W with >100 powers, so if this poll had real results Aadi would probably be number one. :party:

Thanks to everyone who submitted a ballot and who responded to this thread flexing their teammates. Make sure to like and subscribe? Idk how to end this post
Cole Hartung
kinkaid '24

"You ruined quiz bowl for millions of innocent players" - Arthur Gayden

Suetonius states that Titus, upon realizing he had brought no benefit to anyone during a whole day, remarked "Friends, I have lost a day".
User avatar
dni
Lulu
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:38 am
Location: Chicago, IL
Contact:

Re: 2021-22 High School Postseason Poll/Player Poll/Player Appreciation Thread - Results posted?

Post by dni »

Everyone is sleeping on Sinecio Morales, the 17 year old biking prodigy from Illinois. He's also a cracked DUOS II editor, who removed Judaism from the religion distribution following complaints of too much bible in the distro from Katy Yang. After leading the national powerhouse Sinecio Morales to 9th place at IPNCT, Sinecio burst onto the collegiate scene with an epic performance at MUSES earlier this week. Illinois players beware, because Lnecio is going to make the circuit his new stomping grounds, and this L Lrain is not showing any signs of slowing down.
Dan Ni
Langley '19
Cornell '23
Locked