The Quizbowl Resource Center

Alright well I figured that somebody had to start this up sometime, might as well be me. I don't know about every single team, so please help me out here. These teams are just in the order of how well I know them.

1. Detroit Catholic Central: We lose two great players in Matt Nicholas and Michael Yurko, but we return a large senior class. All of us have been working diligently over the summer and we had 19 kids attend ACE Quizbowl Camp earlier this month. Our B team's composure will probably not change too much and looks to build upon the success they had last year (making the playoffs at HSNCT and a solid performance at PACE).

2. Detroit Country Day: DCD loses one of the best (if not the best) player in the high school circuit this past year in Neil Gurram. However, DCD is always able to put together solid teams and one of their kids (John I believe? Correct me if I'm wrong) attended ACE I think. He has also shown that he is a solid player on the IRC from the few times I've ran into him on there. While the loss of Neil will hurt them, they are still going to be a formidable team.

3. Troy: I personally watched one of their games at HSNCT, and they had some nice buzzes. I don't know who they graduate, but I know for a fact they return Sanjeep who is a very legit player. If Sanjeep and his teammates have put in the work over the summer, they will be a force to be reckoned with.


Other than that, I really don't much about what's going on in Michigan. I saw some of Novi's kids at ACE camp which was good, but I really am not informed about their team and who they graduate. That goes for most other teams as well. Please keep discussing!

Yeah, John went to ACE at SEMO.

I guess I'll throw my thoughts out there too:

1. Detroit Catholic Central: Our A team has really put forth the effort in an attempt to retake the state title. Even if a couple of last year's B teamers are put on DCC A, our B team still be strong with a core of juniors/sophomores, all who played on the B team last year

2. Troy: We played them a few times over the course of last year and went something like 3-1, losing to them early at Novi and winning the rest. I think Troy graduates two of its starting four including their top scorer at Nationals but Sandeep returns, who had a great showing at one of the MSU tournaments and shows lots of promise.

3. University of Detroit: They return their three top scorers, most of them juniors, who at the limited number of NAQT tournaments they attended played well. I'm interested in seeing how the Peck twins build on last year. I expect them to place in the top 5 in the state next year and I hope they attend a real national tournament, not NAC.

4. Novi: I know they lose their top scorer Yunbo and I believe there were two others. Peter performed well at ACE camp and he has a supporting cast who also attended ACE dedicated to make a deeper run in next year's nationals.

5. Detroit Country Day: Aside from John, I don't know what else is going on at Detroit Country Day. Judging from experience, their B team has some work to do, but as history shows they have a chance to do well at the state and national levels.

I don't think there's another Neil this year. Whoever wins will win because they have a solid group of 4 who all can contribute.

So I guess I'll just introduce myself here and talk a bit about DCDS.

I'm Siddhant Dogra, going to be a sophomore this year at Country Day. I joined the Quizbowl team in the last week of February, meaning I've only been to two tournaments, Hartland (doesn't really count) and then NAQT States, where I had the highest ppg on the B team, which went 8-2 and won the consolation playoff bracket. My knowledge isn't very broad though, as I literally can't answer any nontrivial history questions and I don't know any chemistry or physics yet either, but hopefully after I take actual classes this year, I'll be able to get some more stuff.

DCDS will return John, Hannah, and Chris from last year's HSNCT team, but I don't know what that means, since playing with Neil is pretty hard. I know that Chris, John, and me have been working hard this summer trying to learn some stuff and playing on the IRC, but John was the only one who went to camp (Chris was in Japan, I had to take care of my brother). I haven't talked with the other people I know, but hopefully they've been working too. Obviously we're not even going to be close to last year, but I think we have a good chance of being #2/#3 in the state. After we've actually played a few games, we should be able to see how we can do without Neil. John and I are going to be at the VCU Sunday mirror, so that should be interesting, but Chris (our history person) won't be there and that means we're going to be awful at history.

Detroit Catholic Central: DCC A is undoubtedly the team to beat in the state and will do very well nationally too. DCC B, if they do return almost all their players, should be able to do even better than last year, and with several good players graduating from other teams, they're probably #2 in the state right now.

Troy: As mentioned, returns Sandeep, who is a beast at science, so if he can expand out into other subjects as well, he'll be a top player. The other returning player, Omar, was in several of my classes in 6th grade, when I went to Boulan Park, and he'll be a very good player this year as a sophomore. I'm not sure about the rest of Troy, but from the single game I played against their B team, they'll need to put in some work. If they work hard this summer, Troy will be very good.

I know almost nothing about Novi, other than the fact that I think they lose three of the five players on their 6-5 team at HSNCT. Novi B finished 4-6 though, so they should still be a good team.

As for the rest of Michigan, I have no clue. Other people would probably know more about the other teams anyway. In any case, it'll be interesting, and I'm looking forward to my first full year of quizbowl!

Like has been previous noted, Troy is losing two of their best players from last year, but should still be fairly solid with Sandeep and Omar. Sandeep should be getting better and better as he takes more classes, and he also assures me that he has been studying during the summer. I'm not too sure about the studying status of the other people on the team though.

I will be honest about this. The following are rankings as to what I believe will happen in the first half of the season for Michigan High School QuizBowl.

1. DCC A
2/3/4. Troy
3/4/2. Novi
4/2/3. DCC B
5. DCD A
and the rest follows.


Of course, I may be wrong, but this is based on tournament experience and studying and what not. I hope I am not showing any bias or favoritism.

Note, when I have 2/3/4 and what not, it has nothing to do with rankings in the first, second, or third tournament; I just did it so that it looks aesthetcally pleasing. So really ,I meant to say Troy, Novi, and DCC B are going to be 2, 3, 4 in some order.

Does anybody know the tournament dates for the Michigan tournaments, Novi tournaments, etc?

I would assume Michigan's Autumn Classic is 1st Saturday in December, but I don't know.

When, if DCC is holding, the DCC Fall Kickoff?

The Novi Wildcat Invitational will be on Nov. 13. Thee Format will be similar, if not the same as last year.

DCC A is by far the best team.
DCC B definitely has a lot of potential, with what I've seen last year.
Novi lost our two best players last year, but will try to remember. Our B-team last year certainly had potential, with Spencer Kim leading the team.
Troy is interesting. Sandeep is returning, with Lily Huang and Andrew Liu contributing from the B-Team.
Gross Point North is going to be very good, with Stephen returning. I'm surprised nobody mentioned them.

Yeah I forgot about GPN. I think they lose Matthew, who had nearly 30ppg at HSNCT. I'm not sure about the rest of their people though. Thanks for the date.

Newsteinleo wrote:The Novi Wildcat Invitational will be on Nov. 13. Thee Format will be similar, if not the same as last year.

DCC A is by far the best team.
DCC B definitely has a lot of potential, with what I've seen last year.
Novi lost our two best players last year, but will try to remember. Our B-team last year certainly had potential, with Spencer Kim leading the team.
Troy is interesting. Sandeep is returning, with Lily Huang and Andrew Liu contributing from the B-Team.
Gross Point North is going to be very good, with Stephen returning. I'm surprised nobody mentioned them.

Both Lily and Andrew graduated last year.

Newsteinleo wrote: Gross Point North is going to be very good, with Stephen returning. I'm surprised nobody mentioned them.

Ah, I know almost nothing about other Michigan teams, so I didn't know if Stephen was coming back. Is Meagen returning? In either case, they'll be very good.

EDIT: Also, you should probably go to your control panel and add a signature containing your name and school, if you haven't already.

Hey guys,

Just as a preliminary announcement, the University of Michigan will host it's annual Autumn Classic on December 11th, 2010. More details to come.

Newsteinleo wrote: Novi lost our two best players last year, but will try to remember. Our B-team last year certainly had potential, with Spencer Kim leading the team.

I think Novi lost (and might be losing) more than just our two best players from last year....

Novi lost Yunbo Nie and Anand Salem, easily their two best players. Who else would they have lost that impacted their team that much?
Spencer Kim has the ambition of Napoleon and look what happened when people underestimated him.
Peter Jiang has tons of potential, too. He's already proved himself to be an aggressive quiz bowler.

Don't underestimate Novi, guys.

Cosima wrote:Novi lost Yunbo Nie and Anand Salem, easily their two best players. Who else would they have lost that impacted their team that much?
Spencer Kim has the ambition of Napoleon and look what happened when people underestimated him.
Peter Jiang has tons of potential, too. He's already proved himself to be an aggressive quiz bowler.

Don't underestimate Novi, guys.

The loss of Yunbo and Anand is great, but will Novi recover? Initially, I thought Novi would and easily become 2nd in the state, but another returner no longer attends Novi. Also, I don't think Spencer should be worried about.

Personally, I think the season will begin very similarly to Neil's prediction.
DCC is definitely the favorite this year, with David Ciccarelli and Ryan Dillon leading the team (I think).
Watch out for Troy, DCD, DCC B, and Novi this year. I think all 4 teams stand a good chance for 2nd in the state.

I would also advise the posters from Novi to not unnecessarily inflate the ability of their teammates.

Cosima wrote:Novi lost Yunbo Nie and Anand Salem, easily their two best players. Who else would they have lost that impacted their team that much?
Spencer Kim has the ambition of Napoleon and look what happened when people underestimated him.
Peter Jiang has tons of potential, too. He's already proved himself to be an aggressive quiz bowler.

Don't underestimate Novi, guys.

I don't think anyone is underestimating Novi. They've been perennially a top 10 team in the state, and the last few years top 5, don't see how this is any different.

I had fun at Novi today, and it was great to play at an actual quiz bowl tournament again! Thanks to Novi for hosting a great tournament.
From the games I played in, DCC B and GPN were impressive; I think DCC B had ~27 ppb in our game, which is crazy good, and GPN was pretty clutch, winning the last five tossups to win a really intense game. Stephen is very good.
From the scores that I was seeing, it seems Michigan teams in general are pretty strong, so should be a fun year of quiz bowl. Too bad most of us have to wait around a month for the next tournament.

Does anybody know how the standings ended up at Novi? I'm guessing DCC A won, but I don't know what ended up happening for 2nd to 4th places.

Great matches all around at Novi today. Very exciting match with DCD in the quarterfinals.

DCC A beat DCC B for 1st
GPN beat NOVI for 3rd

DCC had a very impressive team and they're obviously vying for the state championship back. Props to Troy for being great sports; they were very fun to hang out with. As for rankings, I hope GPN has showed you where we intend to be at the end of it all.

If I'm right, Sid, I think it went DCC A, DCC B, Novi A, then GPN. I can't be sure though. I agree that Novi was a lot of fun and for the most part it was run pretty well. I can't remember the last time I left a tournament before 6. I just hope that more teams host in-state tournaments that don't use one-liners. Any chance Country Day holds a NAQT/House tournament in the near future?

I'll personally believe that DCD wouldn't host a tournament, as it seems like it would probably create problems for the administration, as it was told to me a couple years ago, when we tried hosting one.

Times, could change.

Also, I believe GPN is probably third, just because Evan said GPN beat Novi A, and he is from GPN, so he wouldn't mess that up completely.

Oh wow I didn't even see that...makes a little more sense now haha

Yeah, Grosse Pointe North won against Novi, 270-140 I believe.

Yeah, as much as I'd like us to have some kind of tournament, I doubt we'll have one anytime soon because of what Neil said.

Also, great job to GPN; you guys are definitely one of the top in the state, and I feel pretty stupid for forgetting you up there.

Yeah, Novi didn't play that great on Saturday.

I think for the most part, there's going to be a lot of competition for 2/3/4th in the state teams. Troy A, GPN, DCD, DCC B, Novi A... This should be a fun year. What good/amazing teams out of state are coming to UM Autumn? I know Culver is attending this year....
Did GPN ever face DCC B?

PennySalem wrote:Yeah, Novi didn't play that great on Saturday.

I think for the most part, there's going to be a lot of competition for 2/3/4th in the state teams. Troy A, GPN, DCD, DCC B, Novi A... This should be a fun year. What good/amazing teams out of state are coming to UM Autumn? I know Culver is attending this year....
Did GPN ever face DCC B?

Culver is no longer coming to Autumn (I just need to update the field list real fast. EDIT: you can check out the field now). As far as I know, there are no out of state teams coming.

PennySalem wrote:Yeah, Novi didn't play that great on Saturday.

I think for the most part, there's going to be a lot of competition for 2/3/4th in the state teams. Troy A, GPN, DCD, DCC B, Novi A... This should be a fun year. What good/amazing teams out of state are coming to UM Autumn? I know Culver is attending this year....
Did GPN ever face DCC B?

Late Response: GPN did not face DCC B at Novi

Oh yeah, I meant to post this a while back, but like usual, I forgot...

Does anybody know anything about Utica?I never knew that they had a quiz bowl team, and they don't seem to have gone to any previous NAQT tournaments.
They looked like a pretty good team at U of M, and hopefully that means they'll go to more tournaments.

xpmath wrote:Oh yeah, I meant to post this a while back, but like usual, I forgot...

Does anybody know anything about Utica?I never knew that they had a quiz bowl team, and they don't seem to have gone to any previous NAQT tournaments.
They looked like a pretty good team at U of M, and hopefully that means they'll go to more tournaments.

All I know is that they were one of the winners of the "Matt's Buzzers" drawing.

They played in the Novi tournament earlier this year and had some decent numbers. I believed that they would be not bad, and their performance at Autumn was pretty good.

I remember Utica coming to our HSAPQ tournament last year and I talked to their coach a little. They started last year I think and our A team played Utica at U of M Autumn. They definitely were our toughest opponent in the morning.

So I'm gonna start off by saying that Quiz Bowl is probably my favorite thing of school. But I come from a small school, Chippewa Hills to be exact, you've all probably not heard of us, seeing how I only see mention of teams from Detroit area, but I would like to know what kind of questions are being asked in these highly ranked games because from my transition of Junior Varsity to Varsity, I don't see much of a difference of the difficulty of questions being asked. If you were to google the conference we are in, you'd see we're in the CSAA, and we only have games against our own teams, so we are limited to 8 teams, and there was a 3 team fight for the 2 spots to states we get a year, but this year, it seems only one of those teams has a chance at that spot, and my school is one of the other two aside from that team that can nab a spot, this would be great for our school since we've never been to States before, but if we made it, what would you all think would be needed for an average score per game to actually compete? As you may have been able to tell from my rambling, I am very excited for all this and this Wednesday we play the easiest team in our conference and the team in our conference that won States in 2005, so I'm just hyped. The 3 schools I mentioned earlier that have been fighting for those states spots are White Cloud, Central Montcalm, and Big Rapids they all usually have a great pool of students to pull from, but this year that pool has seemed to shallow and my school's team is 4 seniors and me, so I do honestly think we have a legit chance this year. Sorry, just trying to spark some discussion.

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BeachBowl wrote:So I'm gonna start off by saying that Quiz Bowl is probably my favorite thing of school. But I come from a small school, Chippewa Hills to be exact, you've all probably not heard of us, seeing how I only see mention of teams from Detroit area, but I would like to know what kind of questions are being asked in these highly ranked games because from my transition of Junior Varsity to Varsity, I don't see much of a difference of the difficulty of questions being asked. If you were to google the conference we are in, you'd see we're in the CSAA, and we only have games against our own teams, so we are limited to 8 teams, and there was a 3 team fight for the 2 spots to states we get a year, but this year, it seems only one of those teams has a chance at that spot, and my school is one of the other two aside from that team that can nab a spot, this would be great for our school since we've never been to States before, but if we made it, what would you all think would be needed for an average score per game to actually compete? As you may have been able to tell from my rambling, I am very excited for all this and this Wednesday we play the easiest team in our conference and the team in our conference that won States in 2005, so I'm just hyped. The 3 schools I mentioned earlier that have been fighting for those states spots are White Cloud, Central Montcalm, and Big Rapids they all usually have a great pool of students to pull from, but this year that pool has seemed to shallow and my school's team is 4 seniors and me, so I do honestly think we have a legit chance this year. Sorry, just trying to spark some discussion.

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Welcome to the boards. It's good to see some people from the Michigan quiz bowl frontier. I'm assuming you are not playing a lot of NAQT, and potentially not a lot of good quiz bowl. Really, if you want to go to the state tournament which you are referring to, just hit up the organizer Melissa. You basically will get a spot, if you do so early enough.

But in reality, that tournament sucks. You should go to this state tournament instead: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11095

White Cloud is a solid team, wish we would see other teams from your area at our tournaments.

Also, no one really cares how many points you put up, so you might want to remove that from your sig.

nalin wrote:Welcome to the boards. It's good to see some people from the Michigan quiz bowl frontier. I'm assuming you are not playing a lot of NAQT, and potentially not a lot of good quiz bowl. Really, if you want to go to the state tournament which you are referring to, just hit up the organizer Melissa. You basically will get a spot, if you do so early enough.

But in reality, that tournament sucks. You should go to this state tournament instead: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11095

White Cloud is a solid team, wish we would see other teams from your area at our tournaments.

Also, no one really cares how many points you put up, so you might want to remove that from your sig.

Welcome to the boards.

I agree that NAQT States, the tournament hosted at Michigan, is a much better tournament than the one run by the MSU Honors College. The MSU tournament (not affiliated with the MSU team) runs as a straight double elimination tournament; any tournament hosted by the Michigan or MSU teams will guarantee at least 7 or so games, with more games for teams in the playoffs. Tournaments hosted by the UM or MSU teams will also use better questions. The best teams in the area will probably be at both tournaments, but with more guaranteed games you will have a better understanding of where your team fits in.

A couple of resources you might be interested in are the question archives at http://quizbowlpackets.com/ and http://hsapq.com/sample.html. The first site has a range of difficulty levels, from tournaments targeting players new to pyramidal questions (Fall Novice) to harder national tournaments (PACE NSC). The second site has packets at a more uniform difficulty.

So you guys are talking about these other tournaments, but do you happen to know how the States tournament for Michigan works? I'm thinking the one where White Cloud won in 2005 and were Class B state champions. I don't think we'll be able to attend any other tournaments aside from that, our coach really can't sacrifice time going down to Ann Arbor, so we're more interested in that one where we would be able to do a first for our school. Also, if you couldn't tell, I'm REALLY excited during this time of year because I love the game.

Disclaimer: I say this all with a vague sense of affection, since I won a Class C/D state championship twice at Michigan states (I grew up pretty close to you, actually--Kent City).

The states format is pretty bad. Assuming it hasn't changed too much, it's two timed halves of play with awful questions that don't resemble anything close to strong quizbowl. The questions range from speedcheck to annoying meandering. When I play a team that got a tossup got one bonus question, which seemed to just be the next question on the sheet. It's double elimination, so theoretically you could show up on day one, lose, have nothing to do the rest of the day, play day two, and lose, and be done [my team, in fact, did lose the first match on day one one year, forcing us to go to the mall for the afternoon and see the Eddie Murphy movie Life].

I sympathize with not having the time/resources to do other tournaments--my fondest hope is that someday the circuit on the west side of the state can begin hosting a lot more events. I would really suggest going to NAQT or HSAPQ tournaments hosted by teams like University of Michigan or Michigan State--they are much better. When I was in HS, I didn't play a NAQT tournament until my junior year and even though the quality back then was worse, I found it infinitely superior to the stuff played at many local tournaments in the west Michigan circuit and at states. It's just tough to really pick up on until you play it, so I urge you that if you love quizbowl (and who doesn't?), you should try those things out.

At this point, they have the bonus questions and regular questions separate, but they seem REALLY easy for this type of play such as "What is the gaseous form of a substance called?" the answer is Vapor, but I was quite shocked to see such a simple answer and such a short question, I assume they are a lot more difficult than that in other places?

BeachBowl wrote:At this point, they have the bonus questions and regular questions separate, but they seem REALLY easy for this type of play such as "What is the gaseous form of a substance called?" the answer is Vapor, but I was quite shocked to see such a simple answer and such a short question, I assume they are a lot more difficult than that in other places?

Yeah that's right around the line of speedchecks. Pyramidal questions (Like many that other teams around the country use) tend to be a couple of lines long and have clues ascending from hard to easy (often ending with a simple end question i.e. Who wrote Hamlet?). I played a lot of Non-pyramidal questions in HS so I urge you honestly to try out some NAQT and other vendors questions (HSAPQ, etc.) that use pyramidal questions. Trust me, it is a lot more fun!

Okay, thanks, you guys seem to know a lot about your Quiz Bowl, up here you can tell it's so laid back compared to what you guys have going, I've never actually studied for Quiz Bowl but have been able to see success, and our low scores of 150ish reflect that. Tomorrow is a couple more matches so we'll see if we're actually good enough to get somewhere.

I'm glad you're interested in it. I will probably be home to West Michigan this summer and might be willing to organize some practices if people are interested and I have time.

That would actually have great chance to work, since my dad works over by where you live, and my friends are all on the way to over there, that would be pretty epic if you helped us to practice for the big teams in our conference.

Saw CC at Olmsted Falls last and you guys are continuing to do the Shamrock tradition proud! States should be very interesting.

So it seems that Big Rapids has overcome the rest of the CSAA conference and is going to states. White Cloud is in our conference and they finished with a 5-3 record at best, I assume they ended up 4-4 due to the amount of talent they played and the records of the rest of the schools. There is a conference tournament this Wednesday and the second spot to States is open to five of the seven teams.

I've gotten word that Central is going to start a team. It'll be good to see the circuit expand.

Now that the HSNCT field is filling up, some thoughts:

Does anybody know the plans of Okemos, U of D, and Troy? They've all qualified for Nationals but I don't know if those schools plan to go. I hope that U of D doesn't decide to go to NAC again. It's also great to see teams like Hillsdale and Kent City signed up for HSNCT.

I'm not sure about those teams. Troy is having a really hard time with its extracurriculars- they're completely unfunded at the moment. Going to Atlanta would be a huge issue for an unfunded team in Michigan.

When I return to Michigan in May for summer break, I plan on working with at least Kent City to prepare for HSNCT--I hope other regional teams like Chippewa Hills or White Cloud might come on board too.

Cheynem wrote:When I return to Michigan in May for summer break, I plan on working with at least Kent City to prepare for HSNCT--I hope other regional teams like Chippewa Hills or White Cloud might come on board too.

If you want us to come aboard, you'll have to contact my coach because my dad won't drive us to practice because of "sexual predator activity" which apparently you are in qualification of. If you PM me your e-mail or something I could get him to talk to you.

BeachBowl wrote:

Cheynem wrote:When I return to Michigan in May for summer break, I plan on working with at least Kent City to prepare for HSNCT--I hope other regional teams like Chippewa Hills or White Cloud might come on board too.

If you want us to come aboard, you'll have to contact my coach because my dad won't drive us to practice because of "sexual predator activity" which apparently you are in qualification of. If you PM me your e-mail or something I could get him to talk to you.

What the hell is this post?

My e-mail is in my profile.

Edit: It seems to me like your dad is concerned about his son working with someone he does not know. This is understandable, although you phrased your post like your dad found me on a sexual offender registry, which is categorically untrue. Also, it's not like I plan on inviting people to my house or something. I plan on working with Kent City High School's quizbowl team at the high school with the coach, etc.