2020-2021 NC Discussion

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aqblsheetsmanager
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2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by aqblsheetsmanager »

Since it's around that time of year again, this thread is for discussing teams and players in the upcoming 2020-2021 North Carolina quiz bowl season. Unfortunately, much of the season will likely be online, but hopefully this thread can spark some discussion about different schools which may play in an online setting, or how the NC quiz bowl scene will pan out if we return.
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

All right so I guess I better post in this thread so there's some actual discussion. NC's definitely very up in the air for next year- there are lots of teams that could be very good. I'm not going to do a traditional team-by-team summary because of all the uncertainty. Instead, I'll just talk about the factors that affect quiz bowl in NC.

1) Do teams attend online tournaments? Right now I'm not sure any NC teams have shown interest in online tourneys besides us and Thomas Jefferson. If schools don't go to online tournaments, NC won't have a circuit for quite a while next year. There should be some online tournaments, as far as I know- some Virginia ones may be welcoming NC schools, AQBL has events, and I know of at least one tournament that has not yet been announced.

2) Which players graduate? I'm pretty confident that Jonathan Shauf (Thomas Jefferson), Kevin (NCSSM), and Michael Peeler (Raleigh Charter) all graduate- Ewan Mitchell from East also definitely graduates, which is a big loss for us, and I'm pretty sure some of Christ School does. This means that NC loses a good number of its top players, and I think it may lose even more?

3) This leads into the next point: What is recruiting like? For one, we have a middle school feeder (Smith) that means that we are guaranteed at least a few recruits next year. Some other schools also can count on a middle school, and NCSSM may draw players who formerly played for other teams. However, club week may not happen at all schools, which could result in fewer 9th graders than normal playing quiz bowl.

4) Will there be new programs? Almost every year, new quiz bowl programs emerge and older ones stop attending tournaments in NC. Other teams go from attending NCASA or local leagues only to going to other tournaments, or vice versa. It would be great to see as many teams as possible playing tournaments in NC next year, and I'm pretty sure there are at least a few possible teams that might come to tournaments. Online quiz bowl has its flaws, but it is quite accessible for newer teams since fees are often low and there is no need to get to the tournament site.

Also, one note on the only team I can speak confidently about: We're overrated as to how good we are- our literature and history coverage is pretty spotty and many teams in NC may end up beating us over the course of the season. On the other hand, we can hopefully muster a pretty strong B team.

With all that, I can't see any reason to forecast any large changes in the top teams in NC. NCSSM, Raleigh Charter, Enloe, us, Guilford, TJCA, and all the other schools that contended for tournaments last year will probably continue to do the same if they still exist, although it would be great if there were more contending teams. Once we get further into the season, I may have some thoughts on who the best teams are.
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford.
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by ambre9864 »

Yeah, I can agree with Benjamin up there. I can't really talk to the situation of other schools, but Panther Creek at least loses some of our top players. Noah Hudson-Camack for one, graduated this year, so in addition to him being our top player, our coverage goes down heavily in the fine arts department as he was our best player there by far. That'll definitely hinder us. Obviously Panther Creek is not at the height that it was at 2-3 years ago, but we are striving for that again this year. We are definitely open to online competitions as a whole, though we didn't really look into them until recently. Honestly, I feel like a lot of schools will probably be in a similar situation to us on that part, so I'd expect for the smaller schoolls like ours to pop up around now as well. But we are excited to be able to compete again though. We've got some great new members and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to get on the field.

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Vihaan Ambre
Panther Creek High School, Class of 2021
ChinmayTalikoti
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by ChinmayTalikoti »

I'm responding way later than everyone else, but Enloe's in the same boat. We lost most of our A team, with Subhag, Aneesh, and Jacob all graduating last year. However, we have managed to recruit far more new members this year than in the past, so we might be able to field more than 2 teams this year. I feel like more people have joined since everything is online and there's a lower barrier to entry since you don't have to make a commitment to attend meetings after school. Have either of you experienced this too?

Anyway, we're all still excited to start going to tournaments, especially our new members. I hope we see everybody soon!

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Chinmay Talikoti
Enloe High School '22
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

Here's a form for NC NASAT: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link. Please fill it out if you're interested in participating in our NASAT team. We've been discussing how this will work in the NC quiz bowl Discord, and are excited to hopefully go to NASAT for the first time in a few years.
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford.
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by nyzhang »

The 2020-2021 season is coming to a close, and while there are still a few more months for teams to play and a lot of time to improve, I feel confident enough to write down my thoughts on the NC circuit so far. I'll start by going through my rankings of all the current active NC teams, and finish off with some general thoughts on the state of NC Quiz Bowl at large, and where it may be headed in the future.

East Chapel Hill is by far the best team in North Carolina right now. The A team is headed by top scorer and RMPSS focused generalist Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford, and is filled out by science player and occasional generalist Bo Chi, history specialist Graham Troy, and fine arts specialist Krishna Rajagopal. Benjamin is undoubtedly the best individual player in the state right now, and is a terror even while playing solo (see the recently concluded STASH Southeast, where he handed eventual tournament winners Stanton College Prep their first loss of the day by himself.) As second scorer, Bo is a very good science player with the ability to get powers in literature and trash, and Graham and Krishna both round out the team's holes quite nicely. At Smath Creek Invitational in January, a full East team beat perennial state powerhouses Raleigh Charter and Early College at Guilford 545-195 and 745-55, respectively, and while NCSSM has not yet had the misfortune to play East full, Benjamin has beat us enough times by himself for me to extrapolate the probable outcome. In short, East Chapel Hill is extremely good, and I'm looking forwards to them making a deep run at PACE this year, and considering that everyone on their team is a junior or younger, an even deeper one next year.

I think that my team, NCSSM, has a solid claim to being the second best team in the state this year. We recently won the state championship (albeit with East Chapel Hill and Raleigh Charter not in attendance), and have placed highly at other tournaments throughout the year. NCSSM A consists of five players: myself, a literature and philosophy specialist, history and ce/sci player Benjamin Gordon, science specialist Rasheeq Azad, humanities generalist Daniel Dehority, and crazy good geo player/generalist Samanyu Dixit. Recent results have demonstrated that here is no real "core" to NCSSM A, although I would say that in most cases Rasheeq and Daniel remain constant, while Ben, Samanyu, and I alternate depending on the set. Anyways, NCSSM is very good...some of the time. Our biggest problem is that we lack consistency. Besides Rasheeq, who can almost always get at least 2 science per round, NCSSM is incredibly packet dependent. While this means we can often beat or come close to beating teams that are much better than us, we also lose to teams that are worse than us. This, along with our lack of any sort of RM or FA coverage means that when we play, we simply have to hope that the questions fall into the niche categories that we know very well. Hopefully, as we continue to study and improve, we will be in a much better spot by the time Nationals rolls around.

Raleigh Charter should be the third best team in the state, and is headed by the duo of lit/fa based generalist Ekartha Sharma and science based generalist Aditya Sharma. The A team is rounded out by a rotating group of players, the core of which include literature player Matthew Wallace, history player John Gamble, and generalists Dan Rajaratnam and Arkin Worlikar. Raleigh Charter has long been one of the dominant programs in the state, and maintains their spot as a top team this year, placing higher than every NC team besides East Chapel Hill at the Grapes of Smath, and doing well at various AQBL events throughout the year. Aditya's rise has in particular been very impressive, going from 24 PPB on the D team in early 2020 to being one of the lead scorers on the A team this year. Raleigh Charter is also notable in the fact that it has a very strong B team, and regularly pulls B team players up to the A team, and vice versa. I'm excited to see their performance at HSNCT/PACE this year, and seeing that Aditya and a few other members of the A team are still sophomores, how they improve in the years to come.

The Early College at Guilford is one of the oldest and most accomplished programs in the state, and while they are not at the level they were at a couple years back, when they were the undisputed best team in the state, they still retain their position in the top echelon of teams. Early College is captained by literature specialist Trisha Santanam, and rounded out by history player Miles Kirkpatrick, science player Rahul Jakati, and fine arts player Eric Wang. They placed second at NCASA states this year, and finished higher than every NC team besides East Chapel and Raleigh Charter at Smath Creek, and beat NCSSM at Cavalier Classic in the fall. They should do quite well at SSNCT later this month, and I'd love to see them play at HSNCT as well.

I don't know much about Thomas Jefferson Classical, but Groger Ranks puts them above both Raleigh Charter and the Early College at Guilford. They won the NCASA West regional, only dropping one game to the Early College at Guilford, although they were unable to advance to States due to having already played IS-201, and their stats at other tournaments also seem very good. Dominik Mystkowski seems to be their lead scorer, and the rest of the team contributes valuable points as well. I'll put them at fifth for now since I know so little about them, but I would not be surprised if they are much much better than I'm ranking them. I'm looking forwards to seeing how they'll perform at the Grapes of Smath later this month.

Providence is the last NC team ranked on Groger Ranks, and is headed by generalist Henry Brown, with solid support from history player John Currier, and rounded out by Aryan Gopal and Paige Henderson. They did well at Smath Creek and also at States, and Henry Brown seems to be one of the best individual players in the state right now.

Enloe seems to be this year's biggest unknown quantity, as they have yet to play a tournament with their full A team. Based on scrimmages however, Chinmay Talikoti seems to be very good, and the rest of his team should be too. I would guess that they are about as good as Providence, although I would not be surprised if they are better. Hopefully they're able to field their full team at least once this year.

Atkins did quite well at States this year, but seeing as they haven't played any tournaments this year besides NCASA ones, I can't say much else about them.

Panther Creek has had a shaky start to their program this year, but seem to be not bad at all. Pranav Krishnakumar in particular is quite good, and I'm also excited to see how they'll do at the Grapes of Smath.

Ravenscroft is notable for being a new program that only started playing during online quiz bowl. They swept the NC Novice and Outreach Tournament 7-0, and while they haven't done as well in other events, I think they'll grow into pretty strong program in state, especially once in person quiz bowl returns.

Massey Hill Classical and Northwest Guilford seem to have improved a lot since the fall. Myers Park also seems good. I can't say anything else about these teams though, as they've only played NCASA events this year.

That about wraps it up for active North Carolina teams this year. I think this season has been not that great for North Carolina quiz bowl in general, and many teams have been unwilling to play non NCASA sanctioned online events, or even online quiz bowl in general. I know that many teams have issues with internet connection, especially in the more rural parts of North Carolina, and the more difficult fields of online tournaments (most major ones have at least 2-3 T20 teams in attendance) means that teams that have previously done well in state find themselves getting beaten by top programs from neighboring states, or even from across the country. Many teams have also had to cancel their tournaments, and in particular Raleigh Charter's longtime event Bonfire of the Manatees will not be occurring this year. Hopefully the likely return of in person quiz bowl in the fall will help fix most, if not all, of these issues. However, despite all of this, NC teams have still done quite well for themselves, and I'm excited to see how the state as a whole performs at HSNCT/PACE/ONCT, and maybe even at NASAT.
Nathan Zhang
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by The Blind Prophet »

I will step in to plug my alma mater for a minute. Thomas Jefferson Classical consists of geography-based humanities generalist Dominik Mystkowski, Science Player Camden Sloan, History/Geo/CE Player Aidan O'Reilly, and Lit/CE/some general humanities player Jack Parker. The team is almost assuredly better on NAQT, with a lack of strong FA/RMPSS coverage and being quite good in geo/CE/trash. This team is probably a bit weaker in science than other categories, and probably has some gaps in literature due to being reliant on very real knowledge there. They also tend to have lower power numbers and higher bonus conversion compared to the fields, so take that for what it's worth. I do feel that this team is better than 5th in the state, though I am of course biased. The team is also composed entirely of underclassmen, so they should be even better next year.
Jonathan Shauf
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by nyzhang »

With the conclusion of PACE on Sunday, the Quiz Bowl season has pretty much come to a close, although there is still ONCT in a few weeks. Therefore, I feel comfortable giving what should be one of the final writeups for this season, unless our team or Raleigh Charter manages to place top 10 at ONCT, or if anybody else wants to give their thoughts as well. I'll give some of my final thoughts on each team, and talk a bit about how their roster might look like next year.

East Chapel Hill: Although it's by a closer margin than I expected, I think East retains their spot as the best team in North Carolina. They placed 26th at PACE, the highest that any North Carolina team has done since Guilford in 2015. Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford placed 8th in preliminary and 4th in combined individual scoring with over 100 points per game, and although his support did not scale as well as he did to PACE difficulty, they still provided valuable points in science and fine arts.

Next year, East will be hurt by the loss of their science player and second scorer Bo Chi to NCSSM (more on that later). Despite that, I still predict East to be the best team in North Carolina next year, as with the graduation of the current seniors, Benjamin will likely be a top 5 player in the country. However, East's success at the national level next year will be heavily determined by how much support Benjamin gets, particularly in science and fine arts. A top 20 PACE showing is likely for East next year, if not higher.

NCSSM: In my previous post, I had NCSSM a solid tier below East in rankings. With the conclusion of PACE, however, I feel comfortable saying that NCSSM is only slightly worse, if not even in strength with East. We placed 28th at PACE, the second highest a North Carolina team has done since Guilford in 2015, and we could've placed top 20 if it were not for a moderator negging us when we should've been prompted. We did get absolutely destroyed by East in their game against us, but we also upset some teams that were ranked much higher than us such as Kinkaid. Ben and I have both improved a lot in the month since our last post, and Rasheeq is probably a top 5 science player in the country in terms of how hard he scales. Samanyu and Daniel both provided really great support, but out lack of a fine arts player really hurt us, since the opposing team just had 3 free tossups against us. All in all though, this has been the best season NCSSM Quiz Bowl has ever had, and I'm so proud of the work we've put in as a team.

Next year, Samanyu will be the only holdover from our team this year, as Ben, Rasheeq, Daniel, and I are graduating. One of our biggest regrets as a program this year is that we didn't manage to put together a strong B team, meaning that it's going to take a lot of work in order to rebuild. We do, however, poach Bo Chi from East Chapel Hill, meaning that we likely only need to fill two spots in the A team roster. Ultimately, NCSSM's performance next year will depend on the strength of the juniors, as well as how hard Bo, Samanyu, and the existing players manage to scale to nats difficulty questions. I have faith in Samanyu and the other captains though, and I think we'll be able to put together a strong roster come PACE 2022.

Raleigh Charter: Raleigh Charter has improved a ton since my last post, beating us (although we were shorthanded) at MSU's Spring Novice tournament, as well as placing 49th at HSNCT. Charter graduates top scorer Ekartha, in addition to Matthew and Arkin, but they retain a solid core in the form of John, Dan, and Aditya. In addition, they will likely promote strong myth player Ivan to the A team, rounding out their roster for next year. Something of note is that Dan, Aditya, and Ivan are all sophomores, and Aditya and Dan in particular have improved massively over the course of the year. I have super high hopes for this roster, and think they have the potential to be one of the best teams in the country by 2023.

Enloe: Enloe did very well at the Grapes of Smath, upsetting teams like Wando and Wayzata to take a spot in the top bracket. Chinmay Talikoti is a deadly history player and probably the best individual player in the state after Benjamin. I predict that Enloe will do quite well next year, and have huge upset potential depending on whether the packet favors Chinmay or not. As with all teams headed by one primary scorer though, Enloe's success next year depends on Chinmay's ability to scale up to harder questions as well as the support he gets.

The Early College at Guilford: Guilford rounded out the season with a strong 17th place finish at SSNCT. Although they graduating Rahul is a big hit, Guilford retains the strong trio of Trisha, Miles, and Eric, meaning that they take comparatively fewer losses than most teams this season. I don't think there's been a single year in North Carolina where Guilford hasn't been good, and next year should be more of the same, although their success will depend on how good their fourth player is.

TJ Classical: Jonathan was right that I had underestimated TJ Classical, as they finished their year with a very impressive 7th place finish at SSNCT, although that was offset by a slightly more disappointing finish at HSNCT. I still don't know much about this team, but the fact that they retain everybody means that they'll probably be scary next year. Their success next year though, as their HSNCT performance shows, will be heavily dependent on their ability to scale up to harder questions.

Providence: Providence retains Henry Brown, who should still be one of the strongest players in the state next year. The graduation of John and Paige is a massive hit though, as this means Henry will be playing with significantly less support than he had this year. But if Henry manages to pull together a solid roster, I expect Providence to place highly at state events, and potentially upset teams higher ranked, especially on NAQT questions.

All in all, I think this season has been one of the best seasons for North Carolina in a while, despite everything being online. Personally, this year was my favorite year of quizbowl I've ever played, and I'm so grateful for all the North Carolina teams and players that have made it so fun. Hopefully next year will be even better, and I'm so excited to see how everything plays out.
Last edited by nyzhang on Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nathan Zhang
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Re: 2020-2021 NC Discussion

Post by bengordon »

Next year should be an exciting one in North Carolina QB! So many great players in the class of '22
Benjamin Gordon

UT Austin '25, NCSSM '21
South Iredell HS '19, Mount Mourne MS '17
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