2022/23 Post-Season Shoutout Thread

[DragonSM]

I mentioned that I was going to create this a couple times earlier this year and so here it is. This thread is meant to serve as the replacement for an end of season player poll, by basically just allowing anyone to shout out any players (or teams should they wish to do that as well) who they think deserve recognition for whatever reasons. Although if anyone is interested in making specific shoutouts without having any idea of what to do yet, some good things to look for are specialists, anyone with some form of niche knowledge that doesn't come through well in stats, or just anyone that you think deserves more recognition than they get at present (or people who do get recognition and you want to add to it, either is fine!)

I however am not running any form of end of season player poll since in my opinion player polls tend to not actually be that good at giving any sort of meaningful results, and rather a thread like this will allow for better recognition of all the extremely insane quizbowlers this year.

(Also though I have my own shoutouts to make I will not be making them until later when I can compile them and am putting this thread up now because a couple people asked about it already and think it should go out sooner rather than later.)

(Edit: I know NASAT hasn't happened yet, but I am also not playing NASAT so I basically forgot and given that the season ends in a week it's close enough to post-season to count.)

[cemeterysummoning]

Should I be doing my homework? Yes.
Am I going to write this post instead? Yes.
Anyway...

I'd first like to give a shout-out to my graduating teammates -- Caleb Zhao, Henry Merrill, Heerok Das, and Will Lankenau -- this season would not have been as phenomenal as it has been for Mlair QB without them, and I'll miss them a lot next year. They're all amazing players in their own right, and they're insane at what they do.

Bobby Wang from Livingston is the greatest guy. Apart from stats and, you know, winning NHBB on a two person (!) team, he's just an unmistakable, welcome, and amazing presence in quizbowl circles, and he's a wonderful friend. He also soloed Maroon Bowl, ended up in third place, and had similar, if not better, stats compared to full teams. He's simply insane for that (/pos). I believe that he's mainly focused on history, but he has coverage going for him in literally any other category.

Owen Mimno from Ithaca, noted film enjoyer, is up there in terms of FA player greatness. (He also once told me that he's never been shouted out in a thread before; I think that's criminal and it needs to change.) He has a genuine and admirable appreciation for film and fine art in general. In a similar vein, I also want to shout out Julian Bushlow from Ithaca. This guy is perhaps the king of self-deprecation, but he still shows up to throwdowns and scrimmages and gets history powers (and firstlines!) like it's nothing. It's truly incredible. While I (unfortunately) have not gotten a chance to play Ithaca this year, from scrims and anecdotes alone, it's clear that these two are cracked players, and I hope to see them play and pop off in college quizbowl.

Aalok Bhattacharya from Staples soloed HSNCT this year. That's a pretty insane undertaking, and he really pulled it off, even making it into playoffs. While I haven't been able to play him outside of History Bowl nationals, it's clear that he has a really comprehensive depth of knowledge, not only in history, but in some science subcategories as well. Also, he's an immensely positive presence in the online QB world; while we all clown on him for being the NEQB admin and dictator, we love him for it.

Fierro Grey from Darien is insane at their specialties, especially opera and AFA. Having played with them at KRAMIG, the NEQB World Cup (more bingus forever!), and in so many scrims, they manage to score so many of those "WTF" buzzes. One thing that sticks in my mind is how they powered "Spain" off of "chords," first line (in a throwdown). It's pretty scary.

I don't think it even needs to be said out loud, but I'll say it anyway: Ali Hamzeh from Kinkaid is cracked. Having modded for him (in tournaments and scrims) several times, Ali has a wide coverage of knowledge, from science all the way to literature. (His IPNCT performance speaks for itself!) He and Cole Hartung were one of the two duos to break the H-M limit at NSC this year, which is an impressive achievement, and he remains one of the primarily players to end up with insane power percentages.

Richard Lin from Bellarmine is what we call a a good lit player. I've only faced him at Charter Online Challenge this year, but I could not believe the number of buzzer races he somehow won, in addition his the good bonus conversion coverage. In liveblogging for Venetian, I was able to witness him pulling hard parts of literature without breaking a sweat, which showcases his depth of knowledge.

Andy Gao and Greg Zeldovich from Chenery are powerhouses; need I say more? They won MSNCT, they regularly destroy high schoolers' egos at tournaments (they destroyed mine at LUKA, for sure /j), and they're generally nice people to talk to and be around. In addition, Andy Gao's determination to hit that one tournament, hosted or played, per week average is, frankly, insane. They're are going places. Greg is a deeply funny person with an excellent music taste and an even better taste in myth, with immense skill. (These two also broke H-M earlier this year, at LATTE.)

Joy An from Choate is possibly the nicest opponent you could ever have in a game. Their myth and fa, not to mention lit, coverage is pretty amazing. I've played them twice now, in tournaments, and I'm always awed by whatever firstline buzz they pull off.

The whole of Richard Montgomery A is so well-balanced and evenly matched, it's quite scary. What's scarier is how they're 3/4 juniors, which means that I'll have to play three of the same scary players next year. Somebody pray for me, please (/j).

I'm missing so many good players, for sure -- quizbowl players are getting too powerful! I'll probably take time to make another reply at some point.

[robby_redford]

this incomprehensible textwall is gonna be split into three categories: insanely cracked seniors who i'll miss and who the community should too, insanely cracked non-seniors to watch out for, and members of my own team who i feel deserve special amounts of praise. i'll probably be talking about character at least as much as i talk about quizbowl skill simply because i literally forget every detail of every game i play three seconds after the end of bonus 20. if i didn't mention you by name, chances are you are still incredibly cracked and i love you - you play quizbowl after all!

starting with insanely cracked seniors:
jacob hardin-bernhardt is not only a massive personal hero of mine but a quite good quizbowler; he's got incredibly broad coverage in both history and literature and has led his team to i-don't-even-know how many insane victories across the year. the only reason i can't go into detail is because his entire team is a balanced killing machine and honestly, it's hard telling their myriad insane buzzes apart when i play against them. he's served as an insane role model not only for his team but for me and i can predict with total certainty that he and noted film enjoyer owen mimno, another amazing and passionate guy, are going to utterly tear up college qb as nyu players next year.

talking about how aalok bhattacharya has positively affected the northeast quizbowl circuit is probably the most dead horse i could possibly beat, but it still needs to be said. the work he has done keeping neqb positive and the liqba up and running really cannot be overstated - the fact that he has not gotten a benjamin cooper award yet is probably the biggest indictment of pace that i could possibly give, all the drama from this year aside. quizbowl-wise, he is an insane generalist, probably the best in the northeast, and can pull great buzzes in basically every category he hears. despite the fact that he's soloed or played heavily shorthanded basically every tournament he's played this year, every time we face each other he beats me within an inch of my life and astonishes me with his absolute breadth of knowledge, whether i'm on the opposite end of an incredibly stressful game or just spectating. he's also just really cool to talk to which is always nice.

i've only played cindy gao once, and it was in an online tournament i barely remember - but that's all i need to know what kind of player they are. their depth of knowledge in literature is basically unparalleled - they and darryl wang are basically the only lockdown players in the region for their respective categories (lit and sci) and that is an insane asset to any team they play on. moreover, from every conversation and interaction i've had with them, i can see that they truly do love the subject like it's part of them, which i find incredibly inspiring. every time you talk with them you will get a new poetry recommendation or literature allusion or reference and it is amazing. probably more important than their utterly insane quizbowl skill is how unbelievably supportive and encouraging they are to anyone they meet - you will never meet a kinder person in quizbowl, and this is a community packed to the brim with amazing and supportive people. they have, along with basically everyone on this list, been an amazing influence in my life and my quizbowl career. they're also incredibly tall.

the jp three (kushal aluru, nishanth bhargava, sophia pan) in my mind always come as a package deal. kushal is probably the best science player in the region after darryl, nishanth is insane at history and current events, and sophia is amazing at lit. i didn't go much into detail just because i haven't played them very much this year, but i need to give them special thanks for having probably done the hugest thing in my career and introducing me to carding. they've been such a force of nature in their career and i'm gonna be super sad to see them all go.

time for the lightning round (this is the only way i will keep this post under 10,000 words, i would textwall you all if i could)
eshan pant is an insane literature player who i will be leaning on HARD for nasat next weekend - it's been insane watching his team grow over the year and a quarter i've known him and i can't wait to see what he'll cook up in nyu with the psychopaths.
julian bushlow, no matter how much he tries to deny it, is an amazing quizbowler and an amazing person. unless he's talking about his own skill in this game he is endlessly positive and a really sweet guy.
ian lu is. he's ian lu dude. every time i face him in history i feel unbelievable fear for my life, and i love that for him.
lukas koutsoukos is an insane generalist, as i said last year and will continue to say.
evan lin is probably the only northeast player who can hope to match cindy on lit; he's a behemoth and almost every time i've played him he's beaten me senseless. he's got insane lit and sci coverage, and can hold his own on basically any category. crazy guy.
darryl wang is an absolute lockdown science player - if i hear a sci clue in a game against him i know the tossup's already lost. his depth of knowledge in the category and insane power rate is something to fear, and has won darien plenty of games this year.

okay, that's enough seniors. now for insane players and teams to fear next year.
despite everything, hunter's still hunter. they'll certainly feel the absence of jacob and ian, but my guess is that absence is gonna be filled quick by the absolute titan of quizbowl that is evan schleck. evan, from my experiences seeing him cook, is another one of those players who will eat literally any tossup you give him. hist? geo? fa? film? ce? lit-erally anything? evan's got it. he has enough categories under his belt to thrive in both naqt and macf sets, and he's gonna be a terrifying force to be reckoned with next year. he's got a bit of gap in science, but hey, that's what matthew kohn, an absolutely goated sci and fa player, is gonna be there for. those two, supported by fahian joy, a mad history and sports player, dune joerg (everyone's favorite siken nerd), an incredibly ambitious and hard-working rising sophomore and disciple of anki, and the whole rest of the hunter horde, are gonna keep hunter as a quizbowl superpower next year, just as they always are. also, knowing the four players i just mentioned (dune. knowing dune.) they will easily go into neqb next year as the t1 hair team.

hastings, led by the one and only benny feldman, have had probably the most terrifying upward trajectory that i've seen this year. when i first played benny and hazel and owen, they were dying of thirst, having to grapple with their past in chipbowl and the noticeable absence of sasha, charlie, and ryan, all behemoths of quizbowl in their own right. however, they've evolved to be quite the mineral water critics - benny, interested in ss and trash from a young age, hazel, with her ludicrously capacious mythology knowledge, and owen, the team's number one boy of all things geography, have worked incredibly hard this year to improve and prove themselves one of the best teams in the circuit. from not even making island cup: october playoffs to being t4 at nerc, hastings is probably one of the biggest success stories of neqb. i'm not gonna say they'll be THE team to look out for in neqb next year - that's unsaid. (but is it unsaid if i say it?)

belmont is gonna be in good hands even without the insanity of cindy gao and sam macchi propelling them forward - i really don't think i need to spend too much time talking about the titan that is andrew gao, but i will anyway. andy is not even in high school yet and he has already set more records in quizbowl than most people could even dream of - getting to be a top 10 individual scorer at hsnct AS A MIDDLE SCHOOLER, routinely placing highly at regular season tournaments AS A MIDDLE SCHOOLER, and amassing a gargantuan anki deck AS A MIDDLE SCHOOLER. of course, no chenerybelmont shill is complete without mentioning greg zeldovich, one of the best mythology players in the region and easily the funniest person in quizbowl. did i mention he's also gonna rule bhutan one day? both andy and greg have already scaled incredibly well and will definitely be doing more of that already - those two will have a lot of fun next year terrorizing the circuit together as high schoolers, and will keep belmont alive for years to come. also. impeccable vibes from both of them. 10/10 no notes. (update: i literally forgot they won msnct because the amount of high school achievements they've racked up overshadowed that in my head, but yeah, insane!

darien is one of the teams of all time - even without the titan that is darryl, they still have an incredible base that will only get better as the season progresses. rajiv pujara, my quizbowl brother and oldest rival, is a very good history and geo player, and can absolutely dominate that distribution in naqt. maya pujara has extremely strong lit knowledge and is getting better at an alarming rate. fierro grey should honestly be put in the third section of this shillpost with the livi kids, but i'll put them here for legal reasons; they are an absolutely insane afa player and have been at every tournament i have faced them in. flynn sullivan is a deeply unserious person, and i mean that as the utmost compliment; he brings joy (and incomprehensible amounts of rizz) to every interaction he is in and makes every game he plays that much more fun. he's expressed his intentions of being darryl's replacement next year, and i look forward to seeing him develop as a sci player in that model.


(i'll probably update this post with a full exaltation of my own team sometime later this week - i've been at this for an hour and a half now and my typing fingers are getting quite tired. for the time being just like. livingston. we're quite good at quizbowl.)

[dni]

Everyone is sleeping on King Vidor, the 129 year old American film director and screenwriter. They're also a cracked camp counselor, who found Elliott's glasses, helped blow Maya's balloon, and lent Emmy a towel. After leading the national powerhouse marb to 7th place at Logomachy Online, King burst onto the high school scene with an epic performance at Winter Closed Scrim. DMV players beware, because King convinced Katy and Angeline to staff RM Spring and this King Krain is not showing any signs of slowing down.

[robby_redford]

oh man, i'm choosing to do this instead of studying for nasat or doing anything productive eshan i'm so sorry lmao

anyway! time for the mythical third section: the livi shill!

i don't think we need much introduction, but i'll write some up anyway just because i'm feeling that kind of mood right now. i may be biased, but livingston has probably entered the single greatest golden age of its history. our players are all incredibly dedicated to the game, dedicated to each other, and dedicated to expanding it. my dream for livi has always been to help build a culture of people who fall in love with the game as thoroughly as i did, and holy hell did livi succeed in realizing that dream. i don't exaggerate when i say we definitely have a shot at t1 in the northeast next year.

a gentle (not so gentle) (quite violent actually) reminder, by the way, that these people ALL. deserve to be on your shillposts more. there are a lot of factors to which i owe my success in quizbowl, but the livilegion is by far the most important; take away the livilegion and i am nothing.

so, let's get on to your regularly-scheduled shilling,

seniors first, of which i feel one deserves an extreme amount of praise:
it has been one of the greatest tragedies of livi qb's history that bridget wu was not converted to quizbowl earlier. the dedication she has shown to this game, in her senior year no less, has truly been astounding. every time i meet her she is doing some form of quizbowl activity, whether it be building meaningful friendships with her teammates, learning a new book or economic concept for her endless grind, or just being an all-around wholesome person. her insane optimism and faith in her teammates is unparalleled, and her energy is something i think every single livi person and every single quizbowl player should strive for, and i speak for the entire legion when i say we're gonna miss her a whole damn lot when she goes off to wisconsin next year.

jeffrey xu and akshat thakur are busy men - they did not get as much time to shine during the regular season as i would have hoped, but they both put up amazing performances when they were able to show up. jeffrey is, as we all know, an insanely good science player, and akshat's history and sports knowledge is something to be envied. however, where they really came to shine was in the eleventh hour at hsnct - even when the cards were stacked against them they led livi b to a swinging 5-5 finish and really helped keep the team together. they'll both be missed as well.

now, non-seniors to fear next year:

sophia wu needs no introduction - she's literally sophia wu. as much as she will stridently refuse to admit it, her lit and fa knowledge are the best on the team and some of the best in the region. since she first started playing in 2021, she has never stopped searching for more knowledge and more coverage, not only for quizbowl, but for herself; she genuinely loves her distribution and always strives to learn more about it, quizbowl or not. that love of category is not only a massive asset to livi but something she has passed on to the rest of the legion, who she has helped mentor and for whom she has served as an incredibly good role model and leader. she will always be there to support the team through hard times, serve as a moderating voice when we get crazy, and serve as an inspiration when we get down. the most insane part of this entire post is that she is consistently improving in all of these attributes; more learning, more mentorship, more coverage, and better leadership. next year, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with and a critical part of livi's success. well, more so than she already is.

kevin zhang is the best mythology player in the region and may be the best in the country. greg [chenery] and hazel [hastings] are amazing myth players in their own right but kevin is still... well, he's kevin, man. i don't necessarily know how he does it, and if i did i wouldn't reveal such trade secrets, but he is genuinely insane, and i say this, as we all know, as the highest of honors. sophia is great at lit and i've heard good things about myself on hist, but none of us come close to the sheer dominance kevin has on myth. he's such a lockdown player on the category that it's become an inside joke. if i had to list the amount of insane myth buzzes he's gotten in his career, i'd be here until i graduated. however, it is not being a lockdown myth player, nor is it being an incredibly strong math player, nor is it the INSANE out of category buzzes that he gets sometimes, that makes kevin special; what makes kevin special is his unending willingness to share that wealth of knowledge with his teammates. ask arav, aditya, angelo.. the list goes on and on. kevin has been there, as a myth mentor and friend, to help them grow and to help them become myth lockers in their own right. the fact that, in quizbowl years, kevin is the second-oldest (after myself) member of the club really shows. he, just like sophia, is an integral part of not onythe team's performance but the team's culture.

alan li does not necessarily have the best stats to his name, but when you're on the same team as players like myself, sophia, and kevin, it's natural to get shadowed. he's fairly strong on science and can get WILD out-of-category history buzzes that leave even me in the dust. what i want to recognize him is not his quizbowl skill, even though such skill is already quite good and is bound to get better and better as he gains more command over his distribution, but his dedication to the club. especially after hsnct, he has come into his own as head-editor of CARD to push everyone to work hard and get our very first housewrite over the finish line. he's a loyal livilegionnaire to the last and i look forward to seeing him thrive on the team for the rest of high school.

arav kaushik depreflexes more than every member of this club put together, but he also grinds just as much so honestly, it's all forgiven. he can depreflex a little as a treat. arav's main trademark is the insane dedication he shows to the game itself; if you see him on his laptop, there is a 60% chance he is on either protobowl or qbreader. he is one of the most terrifying freshmen on the team, with a commanding knowledge of literature and mythology which is only bound to get stronger as he gains more experience. he, just like kevin, spares no expense in helping his teammates get better; i think the most indicative thing about arav's attitude towards the club is when he qbreader'd the entirety of prison bowl lit distribution so he could write study guides for his teammates to use. he's an absolute soldier of livi who has thoroughly won the confidence, hearts and minds of his teammates. he was also crazy enough to volunteer for nasat, which is always cool.

ethan liu is one of the most openly enthusiastic and energetic freshmen in the club. he's great with the middle schoolers, always takes time to crack jokes and remind livi of our bright future, and most importantly, genuinely is in love with this game and the people in it. come to think of it, i actually rarely see him not smiling. he's also absolutely insane at geo - his knowledge matches if not beats mine in key areas and i would say at his current rate of improvement, he's going to be a lockdown player in the category just like kevin is for mythology. crazy dude. he and his fellow liu, jack, are going to be forces of nature next year as they get more dedicated, more powerful, and more experienced in this game.

angelo tsounakis is Him. he started quizbowl in FEBRUARY and has come out as one of the most dedicated players i've ever met. his energy beats even bridget's - he, much like ethan, seems to always have a smile on his face when i see him in quizbowl, and he has spent the past SEVERAL months learning anything and everything there is to know about lit, fa, and myth, categories which he has taken a special love for. he seeks out help frequently on these topics, taking advice from more experienced players like kevin and aditya and arav to become the best player he can be, and god help him, he's gonna become the best player he can be. he's also just an insanely cool person outside of quizbowl too - we're talking an incredibly talented piano player and theater kid, and an all around great guy to talk to.

i may have only mentioned 10 livi players, but we have more, and more to come. the livilegion is truly special - seeing them all fall in love with quizbowl this year and fight endlessly for improvement and this club has been truly inspiring to me. they all deserve your recognition and your praise, and fighting alongside them has probably been one of the greatest honors of my career.

oh yeah, in addition, david song, aaron dai, beckie and jess shen, sophia wang, sara lin, jasmine wang, joanna liu, jenny zhu, aarav george, kalyani gollamudi, reesha sawant, and valentina zheng (i really hope i didn't miss any names) are all crucial parts of the livilegion as readers - they give us their endless support, have carried god-knows how many tournaments this year, and are all-around great guys who also deserve recognition as integral members of the livilegion.

addendum: fierro grey and flynn sullivan are great guys in their own right, and livi claims them as well. they are both great friends to the legion and i think that's really cool of them. ONE OF US! we're also claiming maggie kwan and benny feldman for good measure.

tl;dr ten thousand years for livi qb

[robby_redford]

(i'm never escaping this thread lmao)
sophia doesn't have a forums account and wanted me to post this for her, so here we are:

arav kaushik
despite his constant talk about how he isn't, he always proves himself to be an incredibly hardworking, dedicated, and amazing teammate. he has incredibly deep knowledge of literature and mythology, yet he still strives to improve. he's also been a fantastic mentor, always willing to lend advice or teach clues to other players. i've learned so much from him myself, and i am so grateful that he is on the team, both for his quizbowl knowledge and his character itself.

bridget wu
she is absolutely one of the most amazing people i've ever met. her endless enthusiasm for learning is infectious and wonderful, and her positivity is like a ray of sunshine. i always look forward to hearing her thoughts when we send each other pieces of music, and her quizbowl puns never fail to bring a smile to my face. she's also been a wonderful and beloved friend to me throughout the three years we've been in high school together, and i will always be grateful for her presence. we're all going to miss her so much next year.

also, shoutout to fierro grey and flynn sullivan, who are totally and definitely actual members of livingston quizbowl.

[ocmimno]

(Northeast teams/players only)

Enough has and will be written about the best teams and players this year, so I'll keep my shoutouts relatively brief and focus more on my predictions for next year.

Awards! Here are my votes for the best teams and players, and my predictions for who will win in these categories next year.
Best Overall Team: Hunter A — the past two years have both been "rebuild years" where Hunter came off a terrific run at nats, graduated their best players, and seemed like they would lose their top spot, only to come out the undisputed northeast champions once again. Despite the considerable loss of Jacob and Ian this year, I wonder if something similar will happen next year. Hunter B at both HSNCT and PACE was both cracked and balanced, just one indication of the depth of the team's strength. But ultimately I think the mantle of the best northeast team for the 23–24 season will belong to...
Next year: Livingston A — Livingston's t-21 HSNCT finish was actually a step down from last year, when the team of underclassmen put on an incredible run to finish t-10. Livingston once again graduates nobody from their A team, and with the motivation and enthusiasm I've seen first-hand from this team, I expect even more incredible things from them in the future.
Best Individual Player: Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton) — Not really a competition, to be honest. Lukas is the top player (often by a considerable margin) at basically every regional tournament he plays at. Yeah, there are specialists who got higher PPGs at HSNCT, but they don't have the sheer across-the-board generalist prowess that Lukas brings to the table.
Next year: Robert Wang (Livingston) — Bobby has taken on the Herculean task of turning Livi from a team on its way out following the graduation of its exceptional '21 team into a force to be reckoned with on the national scale. Pulling off a second-place individual award at HSNCT basically puts this honor in Bobby's bag, so to speak.
Best History Player: Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter) — Jacob finished first in history at IPNCT, which is, obviously, quite the accomplishment. There's really no better place to make it clear that you're the country's dominant player in a major category. While I certainly look forward to playing with him next year on the NYU team, I'm afraid I must also say goodbye to scoring points of my own. (just kidding Jacob ily buddy)
Next year: Robert Wang (Livingston) — See above, with the crucial addition that Bobby is craaaaaaacked at hist.
Best Literature Player: Cindy Gao (Belmont) — This contest is a little bit more crowded than the other categories, with Evan Lin (Woodland) and my future NYU teammate Eshan Pant (WWPN) being freakishly good. But Cindy, I think, deserves to be recognized as our region's best lit player, helping them net more powers than any other northeasterner at PACE.
Next year: Sophia Wu (Livingston) — With the graduation of all of the above seniors, I think Sophia from Livingston (no, the other Sophia!) is fairly uncontested as the top lit player of the northeast next year. Beating her to a single poetry tossup this year was an accomplishment, let me tell you.
Best Science Player: Darryl Wang (Darien) — Anyone who's played against Darien A knows Darryl's science firstlines are an inevitability.
Next year: Aldric Benalan (WWPN) — Aldric's HSNCT placement (the second highest of a freshman) makes him a player to look out for. (You've probably figured it out now but I don't have much to say about science. These players are insane but I also fall asleep every science tossup so what do I know.)
Best Fine Arts Player: Owen Mimno (Ithaca) — I think I've avoided enough grass these past few years to deserve this one shameless self-plug.
Next year: Fierro Grey (Darien) — I was sort of torn here between afa/ofa specialist Fierro and vfa player Matthew Kohn from Hunter. But Matthew is lucky enough to have teammate Evan Schleck studying afa, so I think Fierro is more likely to take the cake as next year's overall fine arts superstar. Ryan Smith from D-STEM is another worthy candidate — don't sleep on any of these amazing people.

No way I have space for every other subcat so I'll leave it at that.

Other Senior Shoutouts! Here are some other graduation seniors that I would be remiss not to mention:
Aalok Bhattacharya (Staples), an amazing generalist and an even better Discord mod; Ian Lu (Hunter), one of just many incredible history players churned out by the Hunter machine; Joy An (Choate), who fronted the best non-Detroit team at Prison Bowl; Sam Macchi (Belmont), the other half of the Belmont dynamic duo; Sophia Pan, Kushal Aluru, and Nishanth Bhargava (all of J.P. Stevens), who, as Bobby put it, are a force of nature, and who have turned JP from the team we could beat despite the odds into the team we could never hope to beat; and of course, my beloved teammate, Julian Bushlow, a permanent thorn in my side who still refuses to recognize his own considerable strength at history but never fails to delight me with his insatiable appetite for 30ing musical theater bonuses. Keep up the pep talks and you'll lead Cornell to a second ICT victory, my friend.

Team Predictions for Next Year! Teams are separated into tiers based on how well their probable performance next year will compare to this year.
Up-and-Comers — teams that graduate next to no one and will absolutely continue to improve!
- Great Valley — It's scary to see such a well-balanced team. Even scarier to realize that their HSNCT A team was entirely made of non-seniors.
- Hastings — A team that has absolutely deserved their Cinderella-story t-33 HSNCT placement for the amount of work they've put in this year. Considering their team is all juniors, there's nowhere to go but up.
- Livingston — See above description.
Steady Performers — teams that see a loss of one or more top players but still have the possibility of improving on their nats results next year (like we did this year, despite graduating half our A team).
- Belmont — Belmont will see the exit of Cindy, Sam, and Pablo, but also the ushering in of MSNCT champs Andy Gao and Greg Zeldovich. It'll be a wildly different team next year, but odds are, not a particularly worse one.
- Darien — Despite the loss of Darryl, Darien will make good use of the rest of its A team (Lucas O'Flanagan and Rajiv and Maya Pujara). This team goes deep too, with lots of support coming from Neev, Flynn, and Fierro.
- Downingtown STEM — While they lose Yaduraj, I predict great things to come from current sophomore and fine arts legend Ryan.
- Hunter — See above description. Special shoutout to Hunter B players Dune Joerg (you rock buddy) and Maggie Kwan (a fellow film enjoyer!). I will be happily watching their progress from the other end of the borough.
- West Windsor-Plainsboro North — Eshan's graduation will hurt the team's literature stats (but do wonders for NYU's!). Still, they've got excellent freshmen in Aldric Benalan and Parker Woo.
May Take a Hit — it's only natural that teams have their ups and downs. Graduation is just part of life in the high school circuit. But so is finding random new and insane players! Any of these teams could have a renaissance.
- Ithaca — Julian, Simon, and I are all graduating, and that's most of our A team. But not all! Our A team next year could very well consist of four juniors. Our current roster includes science players Kai Imani (who played at HSNCT this year) and Taran Knutson, literature player Brenna Lucio-Belbase, trash king Luke Jablonski, and history/sports player Caedmon Sethupathy. Some combination of these motivated little nerds could make a serious dent in the smug faces of the other northeast teams next year.
- J.P. Stevens — Yeah, they lose their whole A team. But they retain the skills of Hassan and Mihir, who will certainly keep the team from dying.
- Cedar Crest, Choate, Staples, Woodland, Wilton — All teams led by players in the top 15 at HSNCT or PACE. Whether they continue to be dominant forces in the region next year depends on how much their support players got shadowed by these powerhouses.

And yeah, that's it! If I didn't mention you, that's because I forgot about you among all the other names, not because you're undeserving of this list. I love you all and can't wait to see how high school quizbowl will grow in this circuit in the coming years. It's been a great five-and-a-half years, thanks to you. The real shoutout goes out to the friends we made along the way, I guess. Owen [Ithaca], signing out.

[CabbageHugs]

Thank you Sam for doing this so early (late? I assume you're on EST). I'm going to shill my team and our region and then maybe talk about other people later.

It's my final year, so first here's some shameless love for the entire family. I've been blessed to have been on the receiving end of a TJ quiz bowl program that bleeds blue, where our program has always been strong, and every player contributes to making everyone else stronger.

Of our 21 different players at nationals this year, only 5 were seniors. 3 opted not to be considered for playing PACE to attend our graduation. Tim Johanson is an incredible science player, he wasn't super keen on playing quiz bowl this year, nearly not coming to nationals, but he was a really important part of our HSNCT run. He's been really competitive against some of the other top science players. Andrew Shi is an elite one of a kind talent. Obviously there are different methods of studying but I'm not sure if Andrew considers what he does as studying.
Quizbowl success is simply a byproduct of what he does in his free time; that is perusing Wikipedia for pure leisure. When in action, Andrew's capabilities are breathtaking, having the capability to first line, with real knowledge, across literally any category. Because of the nature of his knowledge, Andrew's contributions can widely vary based on luck, but maybe there is something beautiful about that. Keenan and Raymond are both veteran history players who have steadily improved over the years. They were important contributors to TJ C and D making it to and winning game(s) in the playoffs. In addition, Eric Feng and Brian Lai were both good anchors for our D team at their last HSNCT.

Our junior class improves together at an incredibly impressive rate which makes our top teams for next year exciting but also possibly difficult to form. Although it was his first time playing on an A team and against some of the elite teams, Dylan Cheng was beyond impressive at PACE, especially turning up in the finals. His science player partner in crime, Alec Riso is also very proficient at religion, myth, and social science. Although often known for supposed romantic capabilities and a lack of self-esteem, Chris Yoo continues to become really good at quiz bowl. Having only started last year, his dedication to studying and improving has paid off. Chris Yoo's trajectory reminds me of Justin Chen's, and he will be even more brilliant next year. Grace Liu either is or is very close to being one of the top FA players. Consistently using her cards allowed me to have the success I did on PACE and our performance is greatly indebted to her. Grace is also arguably our second best food player, after only Andrew. Ryan Zhang, the founder of the Kiruna Index, is very proficient at geography and learning history at a very fast rate. His continuous strive to improve has been inspiring throughout this year. I look forward to seeing him succeed. Alan Fan is good at history and elite on AFA. Although our PACE D Team struggled without a dedicated lit player, Alan's soaked up a lot of tens that allowed them to win close games. Samuel Li is really good at VFA, often competitive with Grace and myself. His science and religion capabilities are wide. Sanjay Ranjith has incredible knowledge in myth and is working on being a science player. With more confidence, I can see him clamping religion and myth in the future. Brian Zhou has a lot of comprehensive historical and current events real knowledge virtue of being a debater and well-informed. He's also a understated pillar in the bureaucracy of our club. Pranav Ghiradelli is a myth phenom and could become very good if he wants to.

TJ Quizbowl is slightly lacking in our number of underclassmen, but they are all unreasonably good. Of course, based on stats and personality, Deven Hagen barely feels like a sophomore. He was one of the best freshmen last year but really levelled up to be one of the best period(t). In addition to being a next level history player, his well-roundedness from middle school allows him to buzz on almost anything. He also has the ability to logic out answers which only comes with years of quiz bowl experience. My insider information tells me that Abigail Lee could become an elite lit player if she wants to. Even so, her performance in superplayoffs was impressive, taking 3 lit off Tanay in the JV finals. Aaryan Sumesh only started playing quiz bowl this year and is already poised to be one of the best science players. He has the knowledge and work ethic to go really far, and his debut performance at both nationals has been beyond impressive. Although still working out how to play more aggressive and whether he wants to expand to any other cats, Aaryan is elephantine. With more experience, Aaryan will join the ranks of the greatest science players from TJ.

Anthony Zhao is one of the best freshman in the country. He's really quite good at history. I look forward to seeing where he goes. Aarushi Kanigicherla has TJ quiz bowl royalty in her veins, and just like Anthony, already has a (middle school) title. Aarushi is very versatile and has strong knowledge in several categories, so no matter which direction she chooses to pursue, she'll be quite good. Yet another Mr. Huangfellow alumni, Sophia Guo barely missed out on playing nationals but is really good at bio and afa. She will be very valuable for TJ's program in the years to come. While it's always nice to have already developed players go to your school from middle school, it's unhealthy for a club to rely on that. It's been great to see Rohan Singh get into quiz bowl and begin studying. We look forward to his development. It's also been good to see Anthony Xu is also gradually getting better. Oh also, Fern Fang no longer plays for TJ but has a penchant for acquiring impressive deep real knowledge and will become a valuable asset to McLean's team.

Now for other teams ! Starting with the motherland. Often reduced to focusing on TJ, the DMV region is in fact a melting pot of nutty players and bad traffic.

I think it's fair to say that Winston Churchill was the unexpected DMV dark horse at Pace this year. They played incredibly in playoffs beating Belmont and Kinkaid, and then Hunter and Auburn on Sunday. They proved that you don't need too many powers, when you have the power of friendship. Although Andy Yu graduates, I expect Kevin Peng and Alvin Guo to be incredibly strong next year with freshman Aaron Zhou only getting better.

Richard Montgomery had one of the greatest single-elim runs at this year's HSNCT. At PACE they were very close to making top bracket for superplayoffs but Wayzata-DCD shenanigans made it tough. And while they did struggle in tier 2 superplayoffs, they did beat several top teams including Kinkaid, DCD, and Auburn during the tournament. Although she's a proficient scorer, RM should be in good hands once history aficionado Sophie Higgs graduates. With one more year to expand their breadth to match their depth, Rachel Ezrielev will be even more terrifying next year and a big 3 with Joshua Fan and Joseph Chen will be an elite DMV force. RM's respectable B team also provides a number of fourth player options for next year.

Montgomery Blair was excellent at the one nationals they played (though I believe some of their players will impress at NASAT). After beating our squad in the last round of prelims, they had the unfortunate misfortune of running into Barrington for their second time, and then losing to an on-fire RM. Caleb Zhao is arguably the premier DMV science player and has lead this team to more success than some might have expected. Although most of their A-team graduates, designated survivor Ace Chun is an up and coming beast, enormously improving this season. With the amount of college and open level material they dabble in, I can see Ace paving the way for a nearly completely new Blair roster to succeed.

Centennial had a lackluster season this year, struggling at HSNCT. It's of note that their most notable player, Anurag Sodhi did not play, and they do have young talent in players like Max Swann and Ryan Chang as well as the successful Burleigh Manor feeder program, but they will have to put in the work to be nationally competitive next season.

BASIS McLean is more than a decent team, but mostly because they have Cavan G.O. who is recognized as almost certainly the best all-around player out of the DMV this year. However, with his graduation, their sophomores will have to step up significantly if they want to even match the form they had this year.

Fronted by Noah Chin and Ethan Zhou, McLean also found success on the HSNCT stage. Even though they don't play a lot during the regular season, they do not play around. My middle school teammate Noah Chin is really good at the NAQT distribution and he put in heroic performances to beat teams such as DCC and Homestead, the latter of which he went 6/2/0 against. McLean didn't need incredible number of powers as they had really good neg control. Ethan Zhou is also a very good science player and he will be missed by the team. Andrew Evans and Carter Pisocky are on track to be able to lead the team to some success, but they will need their current B-Team to fill some big shoes to be as competitive as they were this year.

With Freeman no longer being an elite team, it was really good to see Central Virginia also succeed at HSNCT. Most schools in the region often play very casually, so the following two teams deserve enormous respect.

Maggie Walker looks really really promising with a team of all juniors. With 30 powers, Sam McNamee is especially scary. Maggie Walker had stellar success in the preliminary rounds of HSNCT, convincingly (all by over 100 points) beating Homestead, JP Stevens, DCC, and Uni Lab. Unfortunately, they did falter in the playoffs, meaning that all the aforementioned teams they had beaten, finished higher than them. With a star player and tremendous surrounding talent, I'm really excited to see where this team goes from here.

Between this year's HSNCT and 2007, Princess Anne has only played VHSL sets. It can sometimes take years for teams to break into pyramidal quiz bowl, but this squad has done stupendously. Best of all, Trevor Darr and Liam Cenzon are already looking really promising as only juniors, though they will need new players to fill the shoes when all their remaining senior players graduate.


That's it for now. I'll probably talk about other teams later, possibly when NASAT's over? We'll see.

[hexadecillion]

It’s the end of another quizbowl season, and this time, I actually have a forum account and some people to write about! I’ll start with people on my team. Just like Robert, my post shilling only my teammates is already bordering on 1000 words, so I’ll cut it short and talk about other people/teams that I enjoyed meeting and playing against in a separate post.

I have had a great year playing alongside my friend Alvin Guo, who was also the one to introduce me to quizbowl. He is an excellent lit/FA player, but his dominance in the mostly-ignored categories of film and jazz really set him apart. There hasn’t been a single tournament or practice where he has not brought up some obscure, but still critically acclaimed, movie. I’m sure that we would not have made it as far as we did at PACE without Alvin’s ability to power on every single film-based clue in existence (there were a lot of them embedded in the tossups!). On both jazz bonuses we got at PACE, Alvin interrupted every single part, showing just how deep his knowledge goes. Playing with him is always a blast, and I’m sure he will continue to astound next year.

I first introduced Andy Yu to quizbowl when we were doing a runout at cross country practice. He ended up showing up to a couple of meetings, but never found a chance to come to a tournament until last year’s PACE. I don’t know what he did after that, but it was impressive, as he quickly cemented his spot on our A team with his obscure geography knowledge, OSP binge-watching, and large pockets of miscellaneous facts. Due to his perfect pitch and background in music composition, there is nothing in the field of music theory and score clues that he does not know. Even playing alongside Alvin, our other phenomenal AFA player, Andy just cranks out buzz after buzz every time the moderator recites a string of notes. His knowledge and curiosity gives him the ability to get 30s on random linguistics, food, and never-visited parts of the world. He’ll be playing for UMD next year, so be sure to watch out!

I was extremely fortunate to have been in a Discord practice early in the school year when Aaron Zhou showed up and started demolishing everyone on history tossups, including me. Apparently, spamming his DMs worked, and he is now an avid quizbowler. It never ceases to amaze me whenever he makes a ridiculous pull on esoteric ancient history, especially Roman. Due to his hundreds of hours in The Campaign Trail game, his knowledge of American political history, especially election years, is second to none. Like the rest of our team, his stats don’t show through getting tossups; I can count at least a dozen times he 30’d PACE bonuses without help. Though we often neg each other out, Aaron’s history skill complements mine and gets us to the end of the match with a win.

Don’t be fooled by Colette Kendrick calling herself (and everyone on our team) bad. Not only does she have a passion for literature and VFA, she had the second(!) highest PPG out of all freshmen at PACE, with only the MSNCT champion Anthony Zhao keeping her from the throne. Though she had never done something like it before, she has already made a name for herself in the next generation of Churchill quizbowl players.

Despite never having eaten Culver’s or Blue Moon ice cream, Tyler Song keeps making the Midwest proud by contributing powers in almost any subject to our B team. With his background in science and engineering, I’m sure that he will continue to make massive contributions to our club.

Sadly, high school quiz bowl has no open-level contemporary visual fine arts, or otherwise, Key Li would have pulled a bunch of crazy buzzes. His passion for every weird and quirky thing humanity has created is unparalleled, and if he expands his horizons, we will have another major fine arts powerhouse on our team.

We have one senior who might join the UChicago quizbowl mafia next year: Claudio-Bastiani Fonck. Though he only started playing this year, he has shown an excellent knowledge in physics, and should he choose to continue in college, his love for Fermilab will carry him far.

Though he may not score as much, Allen Chang is always a good source of comedy for our team. There hasn’t been a tournament this year where he hasn’t given us a nice laugh.

Bernie Jin is an expert in anything to do with engineering and robotics, being able to firstline anything to do with building crazy gadgets. His Wikipedia and YouTube watching will also continue to pay dividends. Next year is also his last year of FTC, so he’ll soon have time to get even better.

Anyone that has met us at a tournament can attest to how energetically weird we all act. Fortunately, our freshman Ulden Gao provides a balance to all of that. He is always calm, and always there to counter us with some sensibility. As a freshman history player, he also performed admirably, and will hopefully keep doing so. Ulden is also the one who pushed Aaron into that Discord practice, so I have to give him credit for that as well.

We have had so many new players join us this year in our club, but I only shouted out those who came to PACE or HSNCT with us. There are always people that I will miss, but that doesn’t lessen their contributions to our club at all. It’s been a great season for Churchill Quizbowl, and I’m excited to return with them next year!

[jrad]

good year for quibble methinks

ohio:
aurora is a perennially good team whose stats underrate them. phillip is maybe the best math player i've ever played (computational or otherwise), and phoebe and aiden are more than competent fa/lit and history players, respectively.
i dont understand why everyone isn't talking about copley, like, all the time. (source that leads me to believe everyone is not talking about copley like all the time: cursory hsqb search.) going from a 122nd place finish at 2022 hsnct to a t13 one at this year's is a pretty incredibly feat, as is beating Perennially-Good-At-Quizbowl-Team solon—twice! would like to shoutout their captain ryan lee in particular, who (in addition to being a very good generalist) was one of the people i did geobee with in middle school, a fact i did not realize until after the last time we played copley.
speaking of which, Perennially-Good-At-Quizbowl-Team solon is, shocker, good at quiz bowl. i didnt play them full this year but even as a amalgam a/b team they're very formidable opponents. would like to especially mention my nasat teammates rohan and prajval.
miami valley plays a very consistent game of quiz bowl: i don't ever feel like there's any room for error when i play them. i do also feel i have to apologize for the Bizarre Scorekeeping Occurrence of 2023. sorry about the BSOo2023.
cloverleaf, upper sandusky, and batavia are all strong teams on the ohio small school circuit (such as it exists) who i think have really excellent leadership and a lot of future potential.
benjamin logan are a deceptively strong team: ras-d (a very strong history/afa player and my other nasat teammate hiiiiiiii) has dominated the games i've played against them with some incredibly crazy first lines, but isaac keeps statistical pace very well.
this team is basically unknown outside of the portage league, but bedford (as i understand it) started playing basically on a whim and put up 18 ppb on their first ever packet. iconic.

not ohio:
in a similar vein to copley, i don't understand why everyone isn't talking about fair grove all the time. braden is an exceptional generalist with a particularly strong foothold in the lit canon and christian is a Very Good history player. i don't like the color purple though, so on second thought they're actually Bad.
glasgow is obviously not the same team it was last year, but they're still very formidable quibble players. will in particular is a very dedicated history-oriented generalist and also maybe the nicest person i've ever met doing this activity.
west point is a very young team, designed in a lab to frustrate me in particular—i mean this in the nicest way possible, in the sense it feels like someone on that team knows everything i know, a little bit faster than i know it. brodie is one of the scariest players in a very scary sophomore class.
woodland is yet another scary team that did well at ssnct with a lit-leaning generalist at the helm surrounded by other good players. (i'd have two nickels!)

cyberspace:
the meteoric rise of ali hamzeh is one of the great quib owl success stories. i've never played a game against him where i wasn't tense the whole time—some of the craziest science buzzes in human history will do that to a man. (of course, i've never lost a game against him...) i understand there are other people on kinkaid quiz bowl, but i have yet to have this confirmed for me.
auburn quiz bowl is the only organization that has ever made me fear the sight of a dining room table.
finally, i'd like to thank the people who reached out to me to talk about quibble (or books, or bad prog metal...) this was the first year where i really felt part of the "greater quizbowl community" and not just, like, an awkward appendage of it, and there's a lot of very interesting and kind folks out there hitting buttons and answering questions! keep at it.

[gumballmachine_]

i started writing a belmont teammates/chenery shillpost, but got overwhelmed with the sheer number of things i wanted to mention on that, so this is a post about the multitude of insanely cracked literature players i've played against this year. there are so many. why is everyone so good at literature this year. help.

in no particular order, but vaguely separated by geographical region,

sophia wu is really, really fun to talk about lit with. her love for poetry and drama (quizbowl-relevant or not) has inspired me to read more in those subcategories and is overall just extremely cool to see. go livilegion. joy an is also an excellent poetry player and is always reading banger poetry. they're also great at writing literature questions - their questions for nawsm & show-me are really fun. evan lin is frighteningly good. i feel like i've played woodland a lot this season, and they somehow get scarier every time. every time we play, i find myself buzzing on lit almost as soon as i have a reasonable guess and wind up buzzerraced anyway. eshan pant is my opp >:(( (<3) he is also terrifying to play against! we once did a lit difficulty-10 pk variant and that has left me with a lasting respect for the seriously impressive amount of deep knowledge he has, as well as his ability to scale. he also just makes a ton of lit jokes and references in conversation that i enjoy. travis johnson, my other opp (<3) is also really strong, particularly at poetry. maya pujara has been super impressive every time i've seen her play or played her (i remember thinking "whoa." in corg3 finals), and darien is another team that will continue to be great next year. rounding out the northeast, danny peelen has been an absolute force for cedar crest every time we've played, and i'm glad that we'll be going to neighboring schools in the fall!

every time i play rachel ezrielev and the first tossup is literature, i internally or externally put my head in my hands. their depth of knowledge is absolutely insane, and i've learned a lot about so many great poets i wouldn't have otherwise read just from being on the same writing team as them for nawsm and hearing quartet (which has some of my favorite lit questions i've heard this season). speaking of great poetry, fern fang has impressively deep and real poetry knowledge, and seeing what they post on the poetry server is always great. elle lee also makes the dmv a terrifying lit region. i'm rapidly running out of qualifiers but like. they're so good. (in non-lit news, also shoutout to elle for hitting the griddy on stage at pace). i haven't seen abigail lee play since last season, i think, but i remember her being really good, as well, and i'm sure she's only gotten more cracked. keeping the tj lit train strong is chris yoo, who is also an excellent part of the poetry server.

i was incredibly surprised to find out that omkar marathe was a sophomore! how is this allowed! i sort of used up all the ways to say "[x] player is so cracked" earlier in this post, which is unfortunate, because omkar is really goddamn cracked. i wasn't super tuned into the circuit before this year, so playing fremd for the first time was an Experience! and this has not let up since! fremd is definitely a team to watch. speaking of not knowing a lot about other teams and having an Experience, i figured out pretty fast after they breezed through the first lit bonus they got that uni lab was a great lit team, and proceeded to get cooked by arjun kala during our hsnct match. and speaking of distinct nats memories, one pace memory i have last year was charles young and barrington quickly and efficiently scoring bounceback points on all the lit parts we missed, and i know they've also got super deep knowledge. though i've unfortunately never played them, i've seen sam from winnebago talk about and play lit on the class of '23 server, and i know that there were mods and players alike at pace that were really impressed by their lit ability. in other midwest players, big shoutouts to all-around powerhouse rohan ganeshan, nathan wu (who was really really good at luka and who i also got cooked by), and litnecio morales! i may have been a prehistoric flying bucklemonkey at pace, but we're really all sinecio fans here.

i think these are the main regions i have experience with playing or have followed super closely, but i wanted to shout out a few more people! ali hamzeh had insane stats at clean and scary buzzes against us at pace. i haven't really played california teams this season, but tanay bodducherla was spectacular at acf fall and i've heard great things about his pace performance. though i've unfortunately never played richard lin this season, i've heard he's only gotten scarier. which, knowing how good he was last year? terrifying.

i really hope i'm not forgetting anyone. to reiterate - lit is all around terrifying this year, and it's been wonderful getting to play so many amazing people.

[kyubb]

i'd like to mostly shout out ppl from our small suburban atlanta bubble-
hooch ppl

ibrahim mohammed is already a solid science player, especially in the area of chemistry, and will most likely be a top sci specialist at nationals next year. also he 30s islam content b/c hes musl-HIM. the amount of growth he's shown in the span of hsnct and pace is mind blowing, and im nothing short of being very proud of him.
uma mukhopadhyay is a lit player who reads(!!!!!!), and got impressive buzz after impressive buzz playing alongside me at pace. georgia circuit needa watch out. also she always gives me great fistbumps
matthew liu is cracked af on myth as well as being a solid history player. although he very hilariously negged the kim tossup at nats with "un" first line, we definitely wouldnt have come close to our t-30 nsc finish without him.
in their next two years of hs, our young core keefer lin, sean lee, martin ames, and tarun devi, will turn some heads in the national circuit. very excited to see them exceed my greatest expectations.

johns creek hs ppl
sam konkel is a very formidable history player/generalist(????). although he said he wont be playing at uchicago next yr, he'll surely do great in whatever endeavor he comes across next. jeffrey xu, in addition to being a kind of really good violinist, also happens to be very good at fa. kevin wang completely blew me away when i scrimmaged jchs a month ago. if he's not one of the top lit players in the country right now, he definitely will be next season. rohan dalal is some type of science based generalist, and is like, good at quizbowl. i was really scared when i played him at pace. also, im betting that hayden qi and edward kim will be top history players in the country by next year. dont say i didnt warn u.

although ive havent really been involved with quizbowl all that much over the past year, im still grateful for the impact the game and the people has made on my life. thank u to the hooch quizbowl team and the georgia circuit for giving me something to do on my saturdays during hs.

ps im very sorry if i scared anyone with my profane/erratic language and occasional buzzer/table bangs.

[hexadecillion]

I’ve finally gotten around to shouting out all the other teams and players that I’ve met this year, and here it is. It’s entirely based on how much I can remember interactions with them, so I apologize if some of them are a bit short.

First, I’ll start with some DMV people and teams that I’ve enjoyed hanging around this year.

As I am the unofficial president of his unofficial fan club, this post would not be complete without a mention of Chris Yoo. Supposedly, my beating him to be the top scorer at the 2021 RM Winter Novice sparked his meteoric rise to being an insane literature player who scales to all levels. Don’t be fooled by his depreflexing; Chris is a menace to play against at any tournament in which you face him. He also might be one of the few literature players who read; I’ve never seen him without a book by a Japanese (or Japanese-British) author.

It was a crime to rob Alan Fan of a chance to demonstrate his history and fine arts knowledge at HSNCT, but he got his chance at PACE. He led the D team to a very solid finish with over 1 power/game. Not only that, but he’s always kind enough to share donuts with me, which is a massive plus in his favor.

I also have to congratulate TJ A on their second-place finish at PACE and their fifth-place finish at HSNCT. Elle Lee has shown that she is not only an amazing literature and fine arts player, but is also a generalist who can surprise you with buzzes anywhere. Tim Johanson and Andrew Shi are both crazy science players. Anyone who is good at science is good in my book, since it's all a black box to me. Deven Hagen is just a sophomore, but is already putting up stats that most seniors could only hope for. Despite calling himself “binary” when I faced him, he must have a hidden stash of deep, real knowledge somewhere. One day, I was scrolling through stats, and I came across Dylan Cheng’s performance on DART. It’s just scary how deep TJ’s rosters go, and many of them can fly under the radar. I’m happy that Dylan got a chance to show just how good he is at quizbowl at PACE.

Outside of my teammates, I have probably spent the most time hanging out with Montgomery Blair this year. First, I want to talk about Ace Chun, who has fixed their depreflexing issue this year and become a top-tier humanities player (plus, they gave me image perms in hsquizbowl, which makes them very cool). I’ve had a very enjoyable time cracking down on all the WCHS injokes in the DMVQB server this year. Not only that, but their desire to improve has led to them writing excellent content in their packets (as a history player, half of it is gibberish, but I’ve been assured that it is good). With Ace, the future of Blair Quizbowl is assured. Caleb Zhao is a t-3 science specialist with his many successes in the olympiads. I don’t think he’s ever carded or looked up stock in his life, and yet he manages to outbuzz almost every science player in every category. In fact, my always getting mistaken for him is a compliment; it’s happened more than a half dozen times. Now, if only he didn’t abandon Churchill for Blair’s magnet program…

Both in person and on Discord, Henry Merrill is always up to provide some strange historical fact, and his Wikipedia binging has served him well in quizbowl. Any person who hates stock and carding is great in my book. Henry’s amusing questions that he sends in DMVQB always give me a nice challenge at the end of the day and introduce me to my next research session. I don’t know Heerok Das as well, but looking at HSNCT, he seems to always get key buzzes when it counts.

Richard Montgomery, one of Maryland’s other perennial powerhouses, has proven again this year that they are able to stand up to top-ranked teams. Of course, Rachel Ezrielev needs no introduction, as they are one of the best literature players in the nation. Just listening to them talk shows me how much more knowledge there still is for me to learn. As an excellent history specialist just a few miles away from me, Josh Fan is always an inspiration for me to get better at quizbowl. He is backed up by the equally-impressive Sophie Higgs, who gets crazy buzzes as well. Their negs appear to hold some power as well, as they caused Blair to neg Venezuela after saying it themselves, winning them the HSNCT round they played. Finally, Joseph Chen has always been an anomaly. I’ll look away for one second, and he’ll suddenly somehow have four powers in a single game. He’s also fun to greet; we ran across the room to dap each other up at PACE, and it created the loudest ringing sound I’ve ever heard.

St. Andrews is an up-and-coming team in the DMV area, and I’d like to take some credit for it. Their president, Nicholas de Carvalho, found our school’s Discord server while tracking down quizbowl in this area, because he was moving here from Singapore. It did end up working out, and now there’s a team at St. Andrews. With their literature and fine arts specialist Anwen Kelleher and their history specialist Ethan Linn, they will return next year stronger than ever. Their program will sustain in the future too with freshman Yohann Coulibaly and sophomore Melissa Nugent.

Princess Anne has returned to quizbowl after a long hiatus, and at their first tournament, they managed to beat TJ B and come second on a hard set. HSNCT was only their third tournament, and making the playoffs with a 7-3 record and coming t-49th is a testament to how deep they really are. More than half of Princess Anne’s scoring is returning next year, so you can be sure that there will soon be more overpowered Virginia teams around.

There are so many other great teams in this area that I sadly don’t know as well. Next year, I’ll be sure to meet them all so that all of the amazing teams around this area get the recognition they deserve.

Next, I’ll talk about all the cool teams I met a HSNCT and PACE.

If teams were ranked based on how kind they were, Belmont has a shot at first place. I mean, Sam Macchi literally made this thread! My interactions with Cindy Gao have also been very fun, from showing them the Anderson buzzer trick to finally tasting one of her amazing cookies at PACE. I haven't talked with Pablo Hu or Julian Halpern-Smith, but I’m sure that they are also great people. Their fourth place run was very impressive, and with Andrew Gao and Greg Zeldovich moving up next year, they will remain a perennial powerhouse.

Of course, we all know Hunter is good, but no one talks enough about Evan Schleck. People constantly tremble in fear at the mention of Matthew Kohn, Ian Lu, or Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt, but it was Evan who led the team in both powers and PPG at HSNCT and PACE as a SOPHOMORE. I have no clue what categories he does, but he must be doing something right if he can lead as dominant a team as Hunter.

Kinkaid is a very scary team. Apparently, Ali Hamzeh was low on caffeine when he played us, but even still, he hit five powers. I can only imagine what a fully lucid Ali might have done on that packet. Cole Hartung, of course, is the best history player in the nation, and if not for a few unfortunate negs, would have replaced us in the championship bracket. Even still, they placed 10th, and if they keep building more support next year, they will continue to dominate.

Though I’ve never had a chance to play them, it was fun meeting Justin Wang and Max Chen of Strake Jesuit and watching TJ B’s games. I can attest to the fact that Max Chen is an amazing jazz player, as we shared a moment whispering answers into Justin’s ears and 30ing a jazz bonus while spectating. Though I have not seen it myself, I know that Justin is an exceptional history player, especially American history. Though half of their A team is graduating, Justin and Max will likely form a strong core for the next two years of their career.

Too many coincidences happened this PACE with St. Mark’s. We were both at UChicago, we both managed to upset top-ranked teams, and after talking with Sohum at the PACE discussion server, we managed to have the same thought process on so many tossups that we both powered in our respective rooms. I had a blast meeting them, and I’m looking forward to seeing them in the future.

I was very impressed in our game against Johns Creek when they powered a tossup on Sibelius. Keep in mind that the clue they powered on was a score clue on the Sibelius violin concerto. We have 3 members with perfect pitch, with one violist, one violinist, and a composer. Johns Creek managed to beat all of us to it, which is just amazing.

I have something to confess: Churchill has never beat Troy. Never. For some reason, they are the absolute kryptonite to our team. Fortunately, we’re not alone; for a school that’s named for the loser of some ancient conflict, they sure do a lot of winning. My first memory of them was Yash getting 8 powers against us at Scottie, and they have not stopped getting better since. It wasn’t even just this year; Troy’s team of Yash, Vishesh, Hrudy, and Dennis have been playing together since the beginning of high school, and their passion and sheer will to continue improving together gave them a very well-deserved 9th-place finish at PACE. Seriously, what is it with Michigan schools and four year-long training arcs to accomplish massive quizbowl feats?

I've probably spend too much time on this, so I’ll leave it here for now. There are still so many incredible teams out there with incredible people, and I’m sad that I didn’t get to meet them all. When I go to my final high school national tournaments next year, I’ll try to not be as antisocial and say hi to all of you!

[Deven Hagen]

I decided to focus this post on teams with rising seniors and below who will return next year.

Barrington A had one of the single greatest seasons by any team in high school quizbowl history, capturing both the HSNCT and NSC titles. They return their top two scorers in Rohan Kher and Charles Young, and they will be amazing next year regardless of whether they choose to continue studying. However, next year's title is not a foregone conclusion: seniors Colin Stewart and Michael Karpov were both underrated contributors and excellent players in their own right whose loss will be missed.

Buffalo Grove, led by (possibly?) the holder of the HSNCT record for powers Rohan Ganeshan, is another team to be feared. I would hope that everyone by now knows just how good Rohan is at quizbowl, and I am confident he will be motivated and continue to study after his great performance at HSNCT. However, I'd also like to shoutout his teammates: Benjamin Finkelshteyn, Jack Omansky, Lucas Pasdo, and Joe Van Hoy. These four are criminally underrated: what most people don't recognize is that they got 10 tossups across the final four playoff rounds, providing Rohan with enough support to win some tight matches. While Lucas and Joe graduate, I am excited to see who will replace them and how the team does.

St. Mark's, a team of all rising seniors that graduates no one, was one of the teams that impressed me the most at both nationals. I had the fortune to play them in the last round of superplayoffs at the NSC and was thoroughly impressed with their performance. I look forward to seeing what they can do with another year of studying.

Kinkaid will return both Cole Hartung and Ali Hamzeh next year, and with Cole's incredible history knowledge and Ali's science (and rate of improvement), they are another team that could easily win the title.

The rest of my thoughts: Hunter is another strong contender for next year, especially at HSNCT, with rising junior Evan Schleck and rising senior Matthew Kohn; DCC returns three rising juniors and is a dark horse candidate; Maggie Walker has a great history and geography specialist in Sam McNamee and will be excellent; Conner Feng and Del Norte did very well this year at HSNCT; Robert Wang and his Livingston team won history bowl nationals and did well at HSNCT for the second year in a row; Strake Jesuit was led in powers this year by two rising juniors, Max Chen and Justin Wang; Arin Parsa is still really good; Omkar Marathe and his team from William Fremd return everyone and are really good at NAQT content in addition to mACF, so watch out; Innovation Academy from Georgia got 21st at HSNCT and return their whole team; Mira Loma had the talent this year to make a Super Seven run and will return stronger next year; Winston Churchill truly scares me with how much they have improved already; Camden Williams and Mexico are a team to watch; and finally, shoutout to Liam Cenzon and Trevor Darr, who will return to lead an excellent Princess Anne team that looks to repeat as VHSL Class 5 State Champions.

[cemeterysummoning]

I've been promising a DMV only shill post, so here goes.

No shill post is complete without blairposting. I've said this before, but Caleb Zhao is incredible; seeing him firstline so many gibberish science tossups that no one else could hope parse (even garnering a "that was the most disgusting science buzz I've ever seen" from Cooper Roh) was an Experience. Not to mention, he just... knows things? He pulled off an insane number of PSS tossups and bonuses, and is also really good at CE. He's also pretty insane at AFA, and knows a fair amount of lit. Category divisions never meant much anyway, and Caleb really proves this conclusively.
Henry Merrill just, like, reads books, and like, remembers what happens in them. All of his history knowledge comes from reading papers and texts, which he does for fun; I can't wait to see him as an expert on the History Channel in the future.
Heerok Das just knows a lot of stuff, from astro to geography. Though unfortunately technical difficulties got in the way, I really enjoyed playing UQC DART with him (even if we were extremely shorthanded).
Will Lankenau is a certified classical history buff, and he finally got his Roman Generals lightning round at History Bowl Nats this year.
I'll miss these four a lot next season.
Gus Vanskike wasn't able to play many pyramidal tournaments this year, but he's frankly an amazing player who knows a lot of deep and random things (all of which somehow comes from background knowledge? The man is cracked and doesn't even need to study to do so). I really look forward to playing more tournaments with him next season.

Already talked about them in my last reply, but I'll say it again: RM is insane. Having played with our king, Rachel Ezrielev, during NASAT, I can comfortably say that their knowledge in literature is off the charts. To my knowledge, they firstlined more than a few lit tossups and independently 30'd many lit bonuses, which, at that level, is pretty incredible. Josh Fan is probably one of the best history specialists in our region, and his other knowledge in popular culture (see: the Marriage Story tossup and the Korean movie bonus at HSNCT) is kind of (?) unexpected but a helpful asset, I suppose. Joey Chen is a good science player; the first time I met him was at history bowl c-set, where he was lugging around Campbell's. It's a funny memory, but I think it really sums up how much this guy likes what he does and how well he executes it. Sophie Higgs is supremely cracked at a lot of things, from econ to history. Michelle Yu is really good at religion and myth, and I'm excited to play her more next year.
Plus, they have a really cool hoodie design.

Saint Andrew's is on their way to becoming a really strong team next year. Despite having just started the club this year, they have some really knowledgeable people. Ethan Linn is a really good history specialist, and he just knows a lot of high-level things about interesting topics. It's always fun to talk to him about obscure art and history. Anwen Kelleher is a Lit Enjoyer (tm); her appreciation for the Bloomsbury group are unmatched, probably. I haven't gotten to interact with them as much, but Nicholas de Carvalho, Yohann Coulibaly, and Melissa Nugent seem like really cool people as well.

Churchill is probably the most chaotic team of the DMV region. Kevin Peng, who I also played with this weekend, has deep knowledge in several facets of history. Alvin Guo is a cracked fa and lit player, and all of the film and jazz bonuses/tossups that ever come up are automatics for him. I still remember having practice just for fun late into the night with these two at all-state orchestra; they are, firstly, good at quizbowl, and secondly, are crazy dedicated. Andy Yu is really good at a lot of different things, from afa to bio and other random content, and is a really strong player overall.

I have not seen River Hill discussed that much, as I think they just restarted their program this school year. They are, firstly, just really nice people; I enjoyed playing them at LUKA. Athena Devashish and Gannon Smith are positive presences in the dmvqb server, when they're online, and Patrick Torre was a cracked player on MD Gold at NASAT. Once they have momentum, I think they'll be a really good team next year, a presence to round out the overwhelming stronghold Centennial has in Howard County.

This leads me to my next mention: Centennial. They didn't play as many tournaments this year, but, as always, their tournaments (Centennial Fall, History Bowl B-set) are always well run.

Watch out for Freeman; they didn't play many "mainstream" quizbowl tournaments, instead sticking to VHSL, but I think they have a lot of potential. Woz has the correct opinions about there needing to be more and better computer science in sets (smh).

How could I leave off TJ? Everyone probably agrees that they have a stronghold over the DMV. Enough said.

I'm not sure if they're definitively in the DMV, but Wilmington Charter is really good. Having the (mis)fortune of facing off against them on DART and having both of our utter losses being recorded, they have an array of really knowledgeable players. Jeremiah Rayban is simply a better vfa player.

[dumak3]

I will focus this post on my teammates and people I played in the Illinois circuit who I believe are underrated.

People I played with:

Shreyas Singh has no generalist ability. A statement like this would sound like an insult, but it should help you realize how incredible of a player he is. Pretty much every buzz Shreyas gets is in a single category. He scales up effortlessly because he is a real knowledge player, and I have never seen him drop a math question. On PACE, he led the field in science points and powers by a large margin. I think not that many people know about Shreyas since he's not online at all, but I view him as one of the best science players and one of the best specialists in the country right now.

Shawn Syed is really good. Even though stats don't show it, he's by far the most important contributor to our bonuses because of his ability to pull 30s in random categories (including science and literature). He has really deep knowledge in History and RMPSS, and he's rapidly improving.

I played with Tanay Bodducherla at CLEAN, and he's really good at literature. He seems to be really good at humanities as a whole from watching him.

Underrated Illinoisians:

Since he didn't play nationals, I think people might forget how good Teigue Kelly is. He is an incredible generalist who scales very high, with particularly deep knowledge in the humanities. His teammate, Vikram Narasimhan, is already an elite History and CE player as a sophomore. I think he's studying other stuff as well, (Fine Arts, Philosophy, and Social Science), so he will be a player to watch out for next year.

Corbin Tutterow is a great generalist who has singlehandedly brought Southwestern to two top 5 SSNCT finishes the last two years.

Sam Asplund from Winnebago is a top-level literature specialist. I'm pretty sure he's real knowledge as well, which makes it even more impressive. He has played great every single time we've matched up, and he 3/1'd me on an SCT D2 packet at NAQT State.

Silas Curtis came out of nowhere this year and proved himself to be a great player. I don't know a ton about him, but stats prove that he's a really good science player/generalist.

Even though their negging habits led them to underplacing at HSNCT, IMSA is a team full of great specialists. Jason Qin is absolutely insane at Fine Arts, particularly Music, and Saketh Dontaraju and Stephen Walsh are two great history players. At NASAT, Jason and Saketh led the team in scoring to a third place finish, which should show everyone how good they are.

Barrington won nationals and everyone knows how good they are, but I still think Colin Stewart and Michael Karpov could get more credit. Colin Stewart is probably one of the best Geo/CE players in the country, which is instrumental to how Barrington performed so well at HSNCT. Michael Karpov is incredibly deep in Math, Physics, and CS, and always has really impressive buzzes. Also, shoutout to Rohan Kher for being underrated at literature.

Finally, everyone knows how good the specialists on Fremd are, but I'd like to shoutout Thomas Lu in particular, since he wasn't able to play nationals. He was Fremd's leading scorer for most of the regular season. The fact that he was able to accomplish that as a Literature/Fine Arts player is even more impressive since he was playing alongside Omkar Marathe, who everyone knows is a top literature specialist.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

[goose25]

Something I enjoy seeing in Richard Montgomery’s play is all of the times when they clearly don’t know too much about the topic of a question. Of course, that’s relative, and the odds are still that they’ll get the question in question right, but still, there are times when—at least to this semi-insider—it’s visible that the team's familiarity with the subject of a tossup is below their average. “That doesn’t sound like a shoutout thread post!” you might be thinking, but I think something really beautiful is happening in these cases. That these moments of not knowing (again, relatively speaking) are possible highlights that every ridiculous first-line pounce or casual hard part answer comes from just how much these players do know about what they care about. Sophie, Rachel, Josh, and Joseph are all incredibly good at this game—each of them has the knowledge and skill to beat anyone in their categories. But great buzzes aren’t isolated moments of individual accomplishment, and being a great player isn’t an abstract identity—these things are connected to an immense amount of time spent learning about the world. In both RM’s incredible play and their random strikeouts, you get to see how much these four players love knoweldge.

I single out RM only because they’re the team I know most well, but you can notice the same pattern wherever quizbowl is at its best. Keep an eye out for it the next time you’re trying to find a real-world phenomenon to explain the phrase “insanely cracked.”

Barrington are wonderful to spectate, because if you zone out of the game for a few seconds to think of a good comment about the importance of camaraderie and positivity to being a great quizbowl team, they’ll have gotten some insane power, and then in the time it takes you to look up what they were talking about, they’ll have gone through about another four rounds worth of fist bumps and laughs.

[cemeterysummoning]

what's up, guess who's back

basically, after a long summer of janky online tournaments, I have a few more things to say

So first off, I know I talked about them already in my first post, but Bobby Wang and Fierro Grey are insane - end of question. (Also, Bobby is a chem/bio player? too? for some reason? this man. bilkerbingus forever ). Playing QUADRUPLET is up there on the most enjoyable online tournament experiences I've had so far. On that note, Sky Hong is f**king insane at science - and she's co'2026! She's improved so much since I played her last, and she'll be a force to reckon with next year (and the year after that, and the year after that...).

Kasuak Gollamudi is also insane. They dropped so many early buzzes on MRNA (noted 2-dot college set) at the Tournament of the Orders, on all sorts of topics, but especially chem and bio.
They're also just an amazing friend (ily, if you're reading this)

I have to shout-out the incoming sophomores at Blair - Arjun Ramachandran and Justin Rosentover came to just about every summer online tournament I suggested to the team, and they're crazy dedicated and talented. I can't wait to see what they do with quizbowl in the years to come.

tl;dr next season will be extremely interesting to see and i'm already so excited