PA NASAT

[bmccauley]

The PA State Academic Coaches Association (PSACA) has taken the lead on ensuring PA Teams an opportunity to play at NASAT. As part of the coaches organization, a committee has been formed to oversee this inaugural run of the PSACA-led NASAT process. A committee of five started discussing the process over a month ago, before the information was finalized by Fred Morlan. Given the short turnout before the event, this committee created criteria to bring in some of the best generalists and specialists in PA for tryouts. In the nature of transparency, some key information is outlined below. If anyone has questions, please email [email protected] and we will try our best to clarify any confusion.

The committee consists of the following people: Ryan Bilger (Gettysburg College), Heather Schnader (Lancaster Mennonite), Peter Schmidt (Lehigh Valley Academy), Shan Hogan (Carver E&S), and Bern McCauley (Great Valley)

For this year, the committee set forth criteria to qualify for the tryouts as follows:
1. A player must have competed in a minimum of two official, non-league QB tournaments. At least one of these tournaments had to be on a regular-difficulty IS set (or an equivalent-or-harder housewrite) during the 2017-2018 season to date.
2. Additionally, players must have met at least one of these three conditions:
(a) Had an average individual PPG in the top 5 of every IS tournament in which they played
(b) Scored a minimum average 65 PPG and a team minimum average 15 PPB on IS sets
(c) Accounted for 20% or better the PPG for a team that averaged a minimum 18 PBB on IS sets
*Two important points to notice, we did not count any league competitions as many leagues have modified scoring/stats & we counted A-sets/easier housewrites toward participation numbers but not for statistic calculations.

These criteria were selected due to the compressed nature of putting together a team within the coming months, while still having a decent sized pool of players to draw upon. All players listed in the post below (32 in total) met the criteria outlined above and should have received a personal email or an email to their coach earlier tonight.

The plan is to select 15 players from the initial list of 32 after the tryout process and divide up into three teams (PA Blue, PA Gold, PA White) that will represent the Keystone State at NASAT.

We hope that this is the first of many times PSACA can help facilitate the NASAT process to bring some of PA's best together for the showcase.

[bmccauley]

The following players met the aforementioned criteria and have been issued invites to the NASAT tryout to be organized by Ryan Bilger:

1. Jaya Alagar (Alagar Homeschool)
2. Rajan Alagar (Alagar Homeschool)
3. Vijay Anne (Henderson)
4. Vince Birch (Indiana)
5. Michael Buffa (Manheim Township)
6. Abhay Byadgi (Delaware Valley)
7. Daniel Chen (Great Valley)
8. Richard Chen (Friends Select)
9. Austin Davis (Allderdice)
10. Will Davis (Shady Side)
11. Jakobi Deslouches (Allderdice)
12. Jamie Faeder (Allderdice)
13. Anish Gadgil (Downingtown STEM)
14. Tim Ganger (Winchester Thurston)
15. Michael Goerlitz (Lakeland)
16. Bryce Katch (Manheim Township)
17. Collin Kawan-Hemler (Delaware Valley)
18. Frani King (Delaware Valley)
19. Rudyard Lynch (Friends Select)
20. Connor Mayers (Penn Manor)
21. Dan Nguyen (Manheim Township)
22. Aravind Sivaram (Henderson)
23. Kevin Salipente (Winchester Thurston)
24. Taran Samarth (State College)
25. Sam Scarfone (Great Valley)
26. Alex Schmidt (Lehigh Valley Academy)
27. Vishwa Shanmugam (Downingtown STEM)
28. Jake Shapiro (Friends Select)
29. Simon Sweeney (Pittsburgh Central Catholic)
30. Jackie Wu (Downingtown East)
31. Will Yaeger (Hempfield)
32. Lily Zhang (State College)

Congratulations to all those listed above!

[bmccauley]

Congratulations to the following players on being selected to Team Pennsylvania for NASAT 2018:

Vijay Anne
Michael Buffa
Richard Chen
Austin Davis
Will Davis
Jakobi Deslouches
Anish Gadgil
Michael Goerlitz
Bryce Katch
Connor Mayers
Dan Nguyen
Sam Scarfone
Alex Schmidt
Vishwa Shanmugam
Jackie Wu
Will Yaeger

The exact makeup of the teams will be announced at a later date.

[Antrobus63]

Posted this on Facebook, but just in case, I thought I'd put here, too:

Thank you to Fred Morlan and all of the writers & staffers who made 2018 NASAT happen. An even bigger thank you and hugs all around to the kids, parents, coaches and guest Skype readers who contributed to the Pennsylvania effort. The questions were certainly tough but the trip was not: judging by the chatter in the van on the way down and on the way back, the kids had a blast.

More, here: I would like to thank our dozen-plus Skype question readers by name--and will do so personally--but I'm not 100% sure that they all want to be acknowledged in public. All they did was read packets to our players and answer their questions--which I'm sure they would have done for other teams, too--but I wouldn't want to mention their names without their say-so.

Still, I think I can say that having 'guest stars' come in to read for the kids was a big plus; I urge all NASAT teams to do this in the future. It's a nice change-of-pace and the kids get exposure to different voices and areas of expertise.