Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

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Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Matt Weiner »

[These posts were the only ones made on the now-abandoned QBHistory blog, and are transplanted here to start the thread.]

For our first feature of the end-of-the-2000s look at quizbowl history, I will do a year-by-year review of high school quizbowl graduating classes. We'll identify the best senior players from the high school quizbowl scene and take a look at what became of them. I'm hoping to find someone to look at who turned into the best collegiate players from these high school classes at the same time as I look at each high school group.

Due to paucity of data and good tournaments, everyone from before 1998 will be grouped together in the first post, and then we'll go one year at a time starting at 1998 afterwards.

Before 1998, we don't have a lot of information. Some hazy recollections of people active on mostly the regional level; some scanty results in the form of top 1 to 4 finishers from various defunct national tournaments, and a single, brief summary of the 1997 NAC. There are no stats to speak of, and the legit nationals (PACE NSC and NAQT HSNCT) didn't get going until 1998 and 1999, respectively. So, we'll summarize what we can about top high school players from the dark ages here.

Many older quizbowl figures agree that Jim Paluszak (Dorman SC '91) was one of the better high school quizbowl players of the pre-modern era. He lead his team to victory at three nationals and finished second at another that year.

Amanda Goad (Maggie Walker VA '96) was a dominant force from her freshman year onwards, but was stopped at the 1996 NAC by a team led by recently-transferred Scott Petty (Houston Memorial TX '96).

Mike Wehrman (North Kansas City MO '97) commanded respect in the Midwestern circuit for a time.

Tennyson Liu (State College PA '97) was one of the first in a long line of great State College players, from shortly after SC burst onto the mainstream quizbowl scene.

NAC Hall of Fame members from before 1998 include: Mike Keller (Irmo SC '87), Eric Evans (Granville OH '89), Paluszak, Matt Bruce (Booker T. Washington OK '92), Mark Staloff (East Brunswick NJ '94), Brad Harris (James Island SC '95), Goad, and Petty. Brad Rutter (Manheim Township PA '95) was retroactively added to the HOF in 2005 after defeating Ken Jennings in a Jeopardy! champions tournament.

You can view Panasonic All-Stars from 1990 on at the qbwiki pages.

Where are they now: Sadly, Paluszak died in 1996 a year after graduating from Rice.

Amanda Goad went to Rice, played a few College Bowl tournaments, and moved on from quizbowl. Having graduated from Harvard Law in 2005, she now works in the New York City Environmental Law Division.

Mike Wehrman spent four years at the University of Arkansas and completed a PhD in history at Yale in 2009, leading teams to high finishes at collegiate nationals along the way.

Tennyson Liu went on to Duke, where he was marginally involved in the school's quizbowl team, and then to business school at Stanford. He is now an Engagement Manager for a financial services company.

Mike Keller's post-high school whereabouts are unknown.

Eric Evans studied Middle Eastern history at Harvard through the MA level, earning a Fulbright scholarship to study abroad in Saudi Arabia, and then obtained a law degree from Michigan, and now practices in California.

Matt Bruce continued to play quizbowl through his undergraduate years at Harvard and time at Boston University's law school and continues to work for NAQT in a software and question-writing capacity. He was the creator of Stats99, a spreadsheet that was the default statkeeping program in qb for some time.

Mark Staloff played quizbowl for several years at Harvard and now helps produce secondary school social studies textbooks at Pearson.

Brad Harris continued to play during his years at Stanford and is now a security engineer for VMWare.

Brad Rutter spent some time at Johns Hopkins and at a record store before winning several million dollars on Jeopardy! He is the host of InQuizitive, a televised high school quizbowl show in eastern Pennsylvania. While he has had no involvement in mainstream quizbowl, he returned to the NAC in 2006 as a moderator.

That wraps up my wide-ranging, but pretty boring, quick overview of the pre-1998 situation with high schoolers. We'll get into the real year-by-year analysis starting with 1998, the year of the first PACE NSC.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by pray for elves »

Matt Weiner wrote:[Brad Rutter] returned to the NAC in 2006 as a moderator.
Brad Rutter was also moderating at the 2004 NAC, which I attended, so that date of 2006 is not entirely accurate.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Important Bird Area »

It makes me feel old to see a bunch of people I played against described as the dark ages. (Now with 15% more Merovingians!)

Some scattered musings:

It's actually very hard to judge the relative strengths and weaknesses of players from this era. High school play tends to reward generalists more than college play does, and this was doubly true in an age when every format had a substantial quantity of speed check questions.* Add to that the small sample size that I only ever saw several of these people play a tiny handful of games, and you should take the following with a grain of salt.

Amanda Goad's 1996 Governor's School team beat my team in the semifinals of the NAC, a game decided by a score of 425-405 (at the time, one of a handful of "double 400" matches in NAC history, a list which was prominently featured in the NAC promotional material of the late 90s- not sure if this document is still available on the web.) I don't remember any particular strengths, other than that she was an excellent player across several major categories and very fast on the buzzer.

Tennyson Liu was the senior captain of the 1997 State College team, and in my opinion unfairly overshadowed by his younger teammates Mike Chiswick-Patterson and Jacob Mikanowski. Tennyson had an excellent command of both literature and science, and I think the 1997 State College team was every bit the equal of the 1998 team that won the inaugural PACE NSC. We only played State College once in 1996-97, in the semifinals of the now-defunct Lebanon Valley College tournament. The game was decided on tossup 19; never in my career was I happier to see a bird tossup come up at a critical moment. (This one was "What is the only bird [JTH sighs in relief] that can fly backwards[buzz]?")

Mark Staloff graduated in 1994, so I never got to see him play in high school. (I did play against him at a Harvard singles tournament circa 2000.) Mark led his East Brunswick team to victory at the NAC his senior year. My old teammates from Manheim Township were his opponents in the finals, and lost by a decent margin (something like 150 points?). NAC was televised that year under the name Texaco Star Challenge, so there was video available. In practice my freshman year, our coach played the video of the previous year's final as a motivational tool, with the lesson: don't let this happen again. Staloff thus became a legendary figure among our younger players, as the only player we had ever seen outplay the seniors who routinely dominated us in practice.

Finally, some words on Brad Rutter, and as Brad was my own teammate I can speak with a great deal more confidence. Brad was an outstanding literature player, very good at trash and history, and quite capable of buzzing on the giveaways of science tossups. (And keep in mind it was 1995, so the giveaway was often the entirety of the tossup.) Furthermore, he was the fastest player on the buzzer I have ever known. Period. (Note again that buzzer speed was far more significant in the high school quizbowl of 15 years ago than it is today.) It would be tempting to dismiss my memories of Brad's lightning-fast buzzer speed as nostalgia; after all, I was a freshman who had never picked up a buzzer before, and Brad was the senior captain of the A-team who started practice in September 1994 by teaching all the freshmen how to buzz in. Except of course we know that Brad has been given a larger stage in which buzzer technique plays a substantial role: and his dominance of Jeopardy! is entirely consistent with the great high school player I knew back in 1994-95.

* (It is for this reason that I found mid-90s high school quizbowl psychologically exhausting to play: every match could be decided by a buzzer race on every tossup. And because it was high school level, you had to pay attention to everything. Compare pyramidal college play, which is relaxing and enjoyable even for large numbers of rounds, because I know I can answer history tossups based on actual knowledge, and micro-sleep during science tossups.)

Edit: coherence
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Thu Nov 12, 2009 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Cheynem »

Yeah, high school quizbowl was such a different animal than it is today. The non pyramidal style, the one-line tossups, the fact that even humanities players were expected to pick up science, the frequent usage of clocks, the almost sadistic usage of "figure it out" writing philosophies...it was pretty stressful (and I played several years after Jeff!).
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by grapesmoker »

Cheynem wrote:Yeah, high school quizbowl was such a different animal than it is today. The non pyramidal style, the one-line tossups, the fact that even humanities players were expected to pick up science, the frequent usage of clocks, the almost sadistic usage of "figure it out" writing philosophies...it was pretty stressful (and I played several years after Jeff!).
It was like the Wild West of quizbowl before the sheriffs came to town.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by at your pleasure »

Out of curiosity, were there any known attempts to import good quizbowl(as it existed then) to the high school level before 1998?
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Important Bird Area »

Doink the Clown wrote:Out of curiosity, were there any known attempts to import good quizbowl(as it existed then) to the high school level before 1998?
None in Pennsylvania prior to fall 1997.

Edit: it seems other parts of the country were experimenting with pyramidal quizbowl
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Stained Diviner »

Doink the Clown wrote:Out of curiosity, were there any known attempts to import good quizbowl(as it existed then) to the high school level before 1998?
Yes there were. A group of U of Illinois students formed a company called Triad Questions which wrote pyramidal academic questions in IHSA format around 1994. In 1994, U of Chicago hosted a house-written high school tournament that was good. I'm pretty sure that there are several other examples from other states, though NAQT probably was the first group to do so on a more national scale starting in 1996.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Important Bird Area »

We didn't produce high school questions until the fall of 1997. (NAQT in its first year of business, 1996-97, produced only three sets: the college intramurals, SCT, and ICT.)
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by TheKingInYellow »

Matt Weiner wrote:[These posts were the only ones made on the now-abandoned QBHistory blog, and are transplanted here to start the thread.]
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Cheynem »

I should try to cobble together the all-time worst questions heard during my early high school days (when we played Chip or Chip-esque formats). I think the worst was some tournament which had a bonus on the immortal sitcom "Camp Runamuck." Sadly, my younger self was not quite as insane into old, bad television as my current self, and we 0'ed it.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by pray for elves »

Cheynem wrote:all-time worst questions
The one I always bring up in this discussion:
Patrick's Press wrote:China has had many dynasties. I bet you thought this was going to be a history question. For 10 points, spell "dynasties".
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Red-necked Phalarope »

At the risk of starting a thread derail:
A high school tournament I played in wrote:For 10 points, name the building you are in right now.
I'm fairly certain said building was also stenciled onto the desks we were playing on.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by nobthehobbit »

Continuing the derail, VETO VI had a tossup that asked us to name the room we'd met in that morning (after a lot of obscurata about the person/company/whatever it was named for); I'm ashamed to say I got that one. But then, it was my first tournament.

</derail>

The best player I ever saw in high school (and I only played Reach and SmartAsk) was St. George's Adam Goldenberg. He ended up at Harvard, decided to write for the Crimson than play QB, and now works for Michael Ignatieff. The best compliment I ever received about my playing skills was when he told me (in 2004, after my team won SmartAsk and his Reach nationals, and we both graduated that year) that he thought we could've beaten them in BC Provincials, but unfortunately taping of those conflicted with the SmartAsk finals taping. That said, I now suck.

EDIT: added graduation year.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Kyle »

nobthehobbit wrote:The best player I ever saw in high school (and I only played Reach and SmartAsk) was St. George's Adam Goldenberg. He ended up at Harvard, decided to write for the Crimson than play QB, and now works for Michael Ignatieff.
He came to a couple practices during my sophomore year (his junior year), but then stopped coming after he decided to run (unsuccessfully) for Undergraduate Council Vice President. It's entirely possible that, at some point in his undergraduate career, he was a member of every student organization on campus.

Changing the subject, I should say that I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity, one year after we played in the HSNCT, to be teammates with Sam Lederer at the 2006 Div II ICT. Sam, who on the basis of his team's many accomplishments deserves some recognition as one of the best high school quizbowl players ever, had a lot more experience than I did, so he tried to explain to me when to interrupt bonus parts to answer (a TJ '05 trademark). "Speed-up mode," Sam said, should happen when you're ahead and trying to score more points or when you're behind and trying to catch up. I asked, "Isn't that all the time?" He said, "You know, I don't know any more. I haven't been in slow-down mode for two and a half years."
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Kyle wrote:
nobthehobbit wrote:"Speed-up mode," Sam said, should happen when you're ahead and trying to score more points or when you're behind and trying to catch up. I asked, "Isn't that all the time?" He said, "You know, I don't know any more. I haven't been in slow-down mode for two and a half years."
Great quote.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Cheynem »

Man, Kyle should really publish a book of these stories.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Mahatma Kane Jeeves »

From Matt Carter, who was in the audience (he played, IIRC, for Governor's School), I learned of a legendary buzz of Mark Staloff at an NAC: a tossup began "This eight-word imperialist phrase" and he buzzed and answered it there. (I'll leave the answer as an exercise for the reader.)

Mark was a quite outstanding player in college; I understand he was often Harvard's leading scorer at CBI when sitting next to Jeff Johnson. As the above buzz suggests, he was extremely quick and clever--probably the best I've ever seen--on general knowledge questions, and questions with some twist or oblique angle on the subject. He was very strong on ACF as well; in the same league in geography and history as my past teammates Vik Vaz and Jeff Hoppes,
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Mahatma Kane Jeeves »

There were quite a number of individual colleges who wrote good pyramidal questions for high school tournaments in this era; for instance Berkeley held well-written tournaments in 1996 and 1997 and UCLA in 1997. (I think the latter was a joint effort with a single set of questions; I played in Berkeley in 1996 and UCLA in 1997.) I was also playing in college tournaments by then, and their packets compared well; they were just easier. Virginia held a few similar tournaments whose packets my high school practiced on. Edison HS (Huntington Beach, CA) held a tournament in 1997 whose questions were similar in style (mainly written by me). I'm sure there must have been more such regional tournaments.

There were some larger tournaments that were intermediate between the Beall drek and pyramidal college-style questions. A fellow named John Gose of "...Just Asking" ran two national tournaments in 1996 and 1997 (at UNLV and USC, respectively), and for many years prior to that, regional tournaments in Orange County, CA and Clark County, NV; not everything was pyramidal to a degree that would have been acceptable at, say, an ACF tournament, but pyramidality was the norm, and the deviations from it (some shorter quesitons interspersed with the longer ones) were often clever or to break up the monotony. He also had much more *interesting* questions than most, covering a wider range of topics than many college tournaments. (I recall answering a question on Rene Thom in 1997 national tournament; I don't recall hearing him ever come up again in anything I ever played. I just searched the Stanford packet archive and found nothing.)

Vanderbilt also held a series of extremely large tournaments (on the order of 100 teams) twice a year which had a draw bigger than local tournaments (if not a truly national one); my memory of the questions, heard only in practices and never in Nashville, is dim, but I suspect they were also intermediate.

But certainly NAQT was the first consistently ran, high quality national tournament. Unless PACE was; that all was after my time, but you all surely have it straight.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Mahatma Kane Jeeves »

Brad Harris was a fine player, but Eric Macarthur, whose Edmond (Memorial?) High School beat him at the Lake Forest tournament in 1995, and then won again the following year, deserves mention. I have no idea what happened to him later.

Mike Wehrman was quite an outstanding high school player; he was always quick, and on high school level questions, that meant dominant. I was rather surprised his team (North Kansas City) didn't get very far at the 1997 National Academic Bowl; I was quite afraid we would lose to him, and never ended up having to face him.

Gautam Mukunda was also class of 1997 and quite good; he was one of the strongest players at Harvard the following four years. He and I were on the team that won the first NAQT freshman division at nationals (or whatever it's called; my memory fades). These days, he's finishing a Ph.D. at MIT's Sloan school.

I guess Brookwood, who beat my team at the 1996 NAB and who we beat the following year, must have had some good players, but I never saw them again and barely remember them. I heard people claim that the students at a lot of the strong high schools in the deep South (them, James Island, Irmo, Dorman) were actually compelled to study to prepare for quiz bowl, and this left a bad enough taste in their mouths that they rarely went on to play in college. I don't know whether this is actually true, because I got to meet few of them, what with them not playing in college. But maybe some of them are reading this and can comment. Brad Harris is the only big exception I know of; he didn't dominate in the same way he did in high school, but he was good.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Mike Wehrman was quite an outstanding high school player; he was always quick, and on high school level questions, that meant dominant. I was rather surprised his team (North Kansas City) didn't get very far at the 1997 National Academic Bowl; I was quite afraid we would lose to him, and never ended up having to face him.
The story I heard is that NKC gave a right answer that was then accepted during a game, but that then after the game NKC barely won and Chip decided to retroactively overrule that right answer (possibly without there even having been a protest?) so that NKC would lose and be eliminated.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by fleurdelivre »

Mahatma Kane Jeeves wrote:Vanderbilt also held a series of extremely large tournaments (on the order of 100 teams) twice a year which had a draw bigger than local tournaments (if not a truly national one); my memory of the questions, heard only in practices and never in Nashville, is dim, but I suspect they were also intermediate.
The Vandy team has kept decent basic records on ABC since the mid-nineties - the site does show some 100+ team instances back in the day. Old questions from many (though far from all) are stacked in boxes in the student org office, but if memory serves (I spent more effort sorting than reading), they varied in quality from year to year depending on organizational leadership.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by etchdulac »

bt_green_warbler wrote:Amanda Goad's 1996 Governor's School team beat my team in the semifinals of the NAC, a game decided by a score of 425-405 (at the time, one of a handful of "double 400" matches in NAC history, a list which was prominently featured in the NAC promotional material of the late 90s- not sure if this document is still available on the web.
Could've sworn I remembered Chip saying that was the first double-400 match in NAC history, but... that is indeed ages ago, so I can't claim any certainty.

Have no idea if there's anyone who also shares any of my memories here, but we'll take a shot at Dark Ages recollections. I saw parts of NACs 1991-96 as a participant in 95-96 and as a spectator at Rice before that.

The first national champion I saw was '91 Dorman, and they were probably the most impressive I saw in my (NAC-centric) era of high school quiz bowl. Rohit was there mainly to mediate between strong personalities, it seemed; he almost never buzzed. Jim Paluszak sat at the far end, energetic and tense to the point of occasionally stammering. Awfully close to the best player I saw those years; Matt Bruce may have won a title with a little bit less around him the next year; Eric Bell's Broken Arrow team sticks in my head for some reason. Anyway... Dorman was definitely a four-participant group, even if the captain was mainly a discussion-moderator. Patrick seemed to own the more obscure stuff, as Chip's spectrum ran; many more fourth-quarter buzzes than third. Catherine Robe was the lone junior on that team, and was a strong contributor on the scoreboard and well as seeming to serve to help keep Jim relatively sedate. Their win over Joann Chang-Eric Biber Collegiate was on the final question, and it was really tense stuff, a great example of how what is now (rightfully) considered low-quality quiz bowl could make good television.

South Carolina was so deep then... Irmo's era of excellence had just passed; the next year, Clinton, Dorman and Aiken were all quarterfinalists; James Island was looming on the horizon. Going to nationals from Texas felt a bit like coming out of a mid-major basketball conference, never knowing just how good that NCAA opponent would be.

I feel like conceding that James Island's Brad Harris was the most impressive player I saw in the early to mid 90s, but I don't know if that's fair on others because I know it's influenced by his disability. Mark Staloff was great, but had good (though maybe a bit single-subject) help from teammates. Biber was awfully good (1993 college jeopardy runner-up/Harvard).

In 1993, Plano East was the top seed in the knockout stages; Sunny Chu was the national acadec honors champ, and they were strong. The No. 2 on that team was a soccer goalie that went to Rice and was on College Jeopardy... can't place the name and his season (11) seems to be the one lacking info on the J! archive. Anyway, that team lost one of those weirdly low-scoring NAC games in the quarterfinals to eventual runners-up Temple, a good team in their own right under Judy West, with David Kneip, Michael Miller (?) and sophomore Jennifer Hopens, who eventually became the state's best player IMHO two years later. East seemed like Texas' best chance to win a title in years; instead, Temple's win set up a Plano High-Temple semifinal, won by Temple; Torrey Pines won the final decisively.

Aldine Eisenhower with Scott Petty won the New Orleans (I think) portion of NAC 1995, upsetting Eric MacArthur's awfully good Edmond Memorial team. They were flown to Washington to face James Island in one semifinal. Eisenhower was the best Houston had to offer; Brad Harris was the best player anywhere. The gap by the end was something around 425-290. I was rather convinced that Harris would not be stopped, but Amanda Goad and Governor's School, an exceedingly young team, proved me wrong.

Petty transferred to Houston (Spring Branch) Memorial -- the kind of transfer that the UIL would suspend a player for a year over -- came back in 1996 with David Fahrenthold the next year and upset Governor's in the final following the double-400 semifinal that Jeff cited. 1996 was also the year of the most prominent James Island hosejob from Chip, sending Brad Harris out early in his senior year. Only Dorothy Meek could elaborate at this point, probably.

I feel like I'm trying to play Grantland Rice writing about all this. I've got video somewhere of a lot of these things up through 1994, televised Chip nationals and Houston-area stuff, probably video tapes long since melted to uselessness. If I dig around and find anything retrievable, I can look into youtube uploading.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Edward Powers »

Jeff,

I was a coach here at Saint Joe's during the 1992-2000 stretch of the NAC Championships and although my memory is sometimes cloudy for much of what transpired in those "ancient years"--your earlier post did jog many of the cobwebs-- I believe I witnessed your team---Manheim Township, correct?---play another great double 400 point match against Verona HS from New Jersey in the National Semifinals---in 1996 or 1997 perhaps? Maybe 1998?

I think your team had earned the #1 Seed and yet upstart Verona---probably a # 16 seed or something like that--- was only down 10---I think 400-390---with a 15 point toss up left---and there was a buzzer race on Socrates with the answer being "hemlock"---and Verona won the race. Final score: Verona 405-Mannheim 400? I had never seen a double 400 point match before, so it was breathtaking as I recall, especially since most toss-ups led to buzzer races, as your earlier post indicated.

And I also think I remember that you & your teammates spontaneously gave Verona a standing ovation for its great play, especially in the field of music, where it was quite gifted & lightning fast. I always admired you and your team's tremendous sportsmanship that day, for it had to be a hearbreaking & unexpected loss for a school that was at or near the top of the NAC for years after your loss to East Brunswick earlier in the decade--and it also robbed you of a chance to play your Pennsy rival, State College. for National honors in the very next round, did it not?

Is my memory correct ? Or am I conflating separate years here? But if my memory is correct, did not Verona also scare the heck out of State College as well---the # 2 Seed I believe---leading SC most of the way before succumbing late in the 4th quarter? Or am I way off base here?

Anyway, thanks for the memories!
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Important Bird Area »

Edward Powers wrote:I believe I witnessed your team---Manheim Township, correct?---play another great double 400 point match against Verona HS from New Jersey in the National Semifinals---in 1996 or 1997 perhaps? Maybe 1998?

I think your team had earned the #1 Seed and yet upstart Verona---probably a # 16 seed or something like that--- was only down 10---I think 400-390---with a 15 point toss up left---and there was a buzzer race on Socrates with the answer being "hemlock"---and Verona won the race. Final score: Verona 405-Manheim 400? I had never seen a double 400 point match before, so it was breathtaking as I recall, especially since most toss-ups led to buzzer races, as your earlier post indicated.
Yes, that's right- this was the round of 16 in the 1998 NAC. Cf. the tournament summary here. I think the final tossup was of the form: "(name) resigned his leadership position in the Hemlock Society after his wife did what? (eight-way buzzer race)" (Although we didn't stick around to watch the rest of the tournament, so I never got to see that Verona-State College match, which must have been a good one.)
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by penforprez »

Edward Powers wrote:Jeff,

I was a coach here at Saint Joe's during the 1992-2000 stretch of the NAC Championships and although my memory is sometimes cloudy for much of what transpired in those "ancient years"--your earlier post did jog many of the cobwebs-- I believe I witnessed your team---Manheim Township, correct?---play another great double 400 point match against Verona HS from New Jersey in the National Semifinals---in 1996 or 1997 perhaps? Maybe 1998?

I think your team had earned the #1 Seed and yet upstart Verona---probably a # 16 seed or something like that--- was only down 10---I think 400-390---with a 15 point toss up left---and there was a buzzer race on Socrates with the answer being "hemlock"---and Verona won the race. Final score: Verona 405-Mannheim 400? I had never seen a double 400 point match before, so it was breathtaking as I recall, especially since most toss-ups led to buzzer races, as your earlier post indicated.

And I also think I remember that you & your teammates spontaneously gave Verona a standing ovation for its great play, especially in the field of music, where it was quite gifted & lightning fast. I always admired you and your team's tremendous sportsmanship that day, for it had to be a hearbreaking & unexpected loss for a school that was at or near the top of the NAC for years after your loss to East Brunswick earlier in the decade--and it also robbed you of a chance to play your Pennsy rival, State College. for National honors in the very next round, did it not?

Is my memory correct ? Or am I conflating separate years here? But if my memory is correct, did not Verona also scare the heck out of State College as well---the # 2 Seed I believe---leading SC most of the way before succumbing late in the 4th quarter? Or am I way off base here?

Anyway, thanks for the memories!
This post made me think as well. Mr. Powers, I think it was your team that knocked my Cuba, Missouri team out of the playoffs at NAC in 1996. It was the first round of the playoffs; I think we were seeded 19th out of 20 (the 20th seed actually knocked off the #1 seed, if I remember correctly). Do you happen to know if that is correct? Thanks! :smile:
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1996

Post by etchdulac »

penforprez wrote:This post made me think as well. Mr. Powers, I think it was your team that knocked my Cuba, Missouri team out of the playoffs at NAC in 1996. It was the first round of the playoffs; I think we were seeded 19th out of 20 (the 20th seed actually knocked off the #1 seed, if I remember correctly). Do you happen to know if that is correct? Thanks! :smile:
The part of this I can confirm is that the #1 seed, James Island, was eliminated by a really low seed, from East High School somewhere in Pennsylvania, I believe. It was, by all reports, a Chip hose on a questionable ruling.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Important Bird Area »

West Chester East was a very good team back then (which has less than no bearing on the quality of the ruling).
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Edward Powers »

Mr. Nelson,

I remember playing Cuba, Missouri and winning---it was our first ever playoff victory, as I recall---but was it 1996 or 1997? I cannot remember which..We went on to score 330 or so points in our next match, I beleive---only to lose by 160 points!!!!---Detroit Catholic Central hit about 10 or 12 in row in the 4th Quarter after we had taken the kead and we ended up losing something like 490-330! DCC had a grea club, but I think they lost in the next round to either North Kansas City or State College---but my memory is not entirely clear on this.

As for the 2nd part of your question---I do not know if a 20th seed defeated the number 1 seed, which i think was a great James Island team, but I do remember Jamea Island being upset fairly early in the playoffs after averaging somewhere near 480-500 points in prelims. Sorry I cannot be more accurate than this---the years do blend to gether for me now.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by etchdulac »

bt_green_warbler wrote:West Chester East was a very good team back then (which has less than no bearing on the quality of the ruling).
I didn't even see the match, but to play close enough to James Island to benefit from any kind of controversy, they have to have been very good. At the time, I heard a description of what happened, but since I wasn't there, time has dulled the details in my mind to "Chip hose #37."
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Re: 1996

Post by penforprez »

etchdulac wrote:The part of this I can confirm is that the #1 seed, James Island, was eliminated by a really low seed, from East High School somewhere in Pennsylvania, I believe. It was, by all reports, a Chip hose on a questionable ruling.
Yep, East was #20, the last seed in the playoffs. They made it to the quarterfinals, I think.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by btressler »

Edward Powers wrote:As for the 2nd part of your question---I do not know if a 20th seed defeated the number 1 seed, which i think was a great James Island team, but I do remember Jamea Island being upset fairly early in the playoffs after averaging somewhere near 480-500 points in prelims. Sorry I cannot be more accurate than this---the years do blend to gether for me now.
I can also tell you that at the May 2004 New Orleans site, the 16 seed made quarters beating the 1 seed.

We were number 16 and had had the schedule of death: all four of our opponents also made the playoff. The 1 seed was a team we had already played and lost to by a slim margin in the previous encounter.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by staloff »

Hi, this is Mark Staloff. David from Berkeley invited me to join him on an old fogies' team at the T Party this year, so I discovered this site, and am pleasantly shocked that anyone still keeps track of this NAC ancient history. It was a long time ago, and I'm glad the high school quiz circuit has only strengthened and gotten more professional in the years since.

I am still working in educational publishing and find it's a great field for people with our skill set who aren't looking to go into the sciences or academia or anything that pays extremely well. Thanks Dave, I was never a particularly strong ACF player and couldn't hold a candle to the best players in college bowl when I was an undergrad, but I did love the CBI style of questions.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by etchdulac »

If anyone would be interested in any of these being recovered, I just happened across about 12 VHS tapes worth of Texaco recordings from both national tournaments and Houston-area tournaments from about 1992 through the end of the televised era, including the Mark Wahlberg season that Mr. Staloff will be familiar with. Drop a line here if there's something you'd want me to check for to potentially transfer (VHS to DVD to online, unless someone has a better idea). The video will be low quality, but the audio (for anyone nostalgic for Chip-'quality' questions) appears relatively unaffected by decades of poor storage.

I'll update this entry as I discover what all I've got.
From Texaco Star NAC:
1.) 1992 tournament (ending with Booker T. Washington (OK) 380-350 Clinton (SC))
2.) 1993 final (Torrey Pines (CA) 370-265 Temple (TX))
3.) 1994 tournament (ending with East Brunswick (NJ) 460-340 Manheim Township(PA))

From Houston-area Texaco Star Academic Challenge:
1.) 1991-92 quarterfinals to final (concluding with Clear Brook 305-255 Klein Forest)
2.) 1992-93 tournament (concluding with Langham Creek 405-295 Clear Brook)
3.) 1993-94 tournament (concluding with Kingwood 310-235 Kinkaid)
4.) 1994-95 tournament (concluding with Memorial 465-205 Saint John's)
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by scquizbowl »

I also have one tape from the 1995 NAC, about four games worth. It includes the televised tournament, as James Island plays a game, and there's two games from the Amanda Goad Governor's School team, one against Grand Rapids City.

I could post them up on YouTube if possible.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by SMUChris »

I was on the Edmond Memorial 1995 & 1996 team. Eric McArthur was our captain and is a close friend of mine. We played Brad Harris' James Island in the finals of the Chicago Lake Forest tournament of 1995. The match was the best that I've ever seen. It ended in a tie. Eric answered the tiebreaker for the win. Eric McArthur dominated that tournament. I believe we eliminated a Dorman team earlier in the tournament, and that game wasn't even close.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by SMUChris »

scquizbowl wrote:I also have one tape from the 1995 NAC, about four games worth. It includes the televised tournament, as James Island plays a game, and there's two games from the Amanda Goad Governor's School team, one against Grand Rapids City.

I could post them up on YouTube if possible.
If you have the '95 Lake Forest finals, I'd pay to get a copy.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by wadobbie »

I've got to agree. I was on the Henry Ford II (Sterling Heights, Michigan) from 91-95. We had a disappointing showing at the 95 Lake Forest tourney, losing to James Island and the seemingly unstoppable Brad along the way. that final match was incredible.

Today I coach a young team in the Detroit area (Utica Academy) and it is amazing how much the game has changed. my old coach unloaded tons of old tourney questions on me, and most are virtually useless for today's game.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by fryede »

fleurdelivre wrote:
Mahatma Kane Jeeves wrote:Vanderbilt also held a series of extremely large tournaments (on the order of 100 teams) twice a year which had a draw bigger than local tournaments (if not a truly national one); my memory of the questions, heard only in practices and never in Nashville, is dim, but I suspect they were also intermediate.
The Vandy team has kept decent basic records on ABC since the mid-nineties - the site does show some 100+ team instances back in the day. Old questions from many (though far from all) are stacked in boxes in the student org office, but if memory serves (I spent more effort sorting than reading), they varied in quality from year to year depending on organizational leadership.
I ran six of those tournaments. We certainly thought we were hot $#!+ back in the day. No one that we knew of (certainly no one on the college circuit) was running high school tournaments of that size and regularity. While the field was always dominated by teams in the 100-mile zone around Nashville, we made a conscious effort to invite the top teams from around the country. And, to some degree, they came. The feedback we always got was "everyone comes to the Vanderbilt tournament because *everyone* comes to the Vanderbilt tournament."

We used optional Friday-night power matching rounds (about 80% opted) to create seeded Saturday six-team pools (at a time when many other tournaments were still using random draws for double-elimination-only tournaments.) We guaranteed 5 matches to every team that showed up, and that was a big deal at the time. The one time we went with seven-team pools, the feedback was overwhelming that this was "exhausting" or "grueling" and we quickly switched back.

We were also use primitive mail-merge technology to create a a personalized schedule for every team and every moderator and it was ready when they arrived on Saturday morning.

We also made a conscious effort to write good questions, i.e. the same questions we were writing for the college circuit at the time, and not the crap that Chip Beale was flogging. If anything, our college-level writing suffered because we were *always* writing questions for the high school tournament.

I'm looking back now at the playoff brackets, and the teams that did well 15 years ago in Nashville are still (for the most part) the teams that did well two days ago in Atlanta.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<1998)

Post by Matt »

I knew Scott Petty and we were team mates in high school, anyone know where he is now days, I lost track of him after graduation??

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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<19

Post by Mahatma Kane Jeeves »

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) wrote:
Mike Wehrman was quite an outstanding high school player; he was always quick, and on high school level questions, that meant dominant. I was rather surprised his team (North Kansas City) didn't get very far at the 1997 National Academic Bowl; I was quite afraid we would lose to him, and never ended up having to face him.
The story I heard is that NKC gave a right answer that was then accepted during a game, but that then after the game NKC barely won and Chip decided to retroactively overrule that right answer (possibly without there even having been a protest?) so that NKC would lose and be eliminated.
hm, somehow I only noticed this reply 4.5 years later. anyhow: I know nothing about that, but it sounds like some bullshit. we won NAC that year, but I think NKC must have been at the other prelim site. Or at least, if we were at the same site, he wasn't on my horizon, and anyhow, i didn't hear the story. or i did and forgot it in the subsequent 17 (!) years.

I was referring to John Gose's National Academic Bowl, not Chip Beall's NAC. I have no reason to think there was anything worse than bad luck behind NKC's loss there; there were never issues of honesty or tournament integrity at John Gose's tournaments. His tournaments were much better written than Chip's, and there was none of the bullshit. I don't know what happened to him and why the tournaments didn't continue. (Though I seem to remember that he was having some health problems.) They were the best available at the time, so it's a pity. Both in that they were better much written than the standards of his day, but also they had much more interesting and wide-ranging questions than I saw even in many collegiate tournaments.

Anyhow, since Gose ran tournaments (besides the two national tournaments in 1996 and 1997, he ran a few CA and NV invitationals and county tournaments sponsored by the local kiwanis club) in the west coast, I think this wasn't so widely known. (Though at the national tournaments, there were a fair number of teams who came from afar.) It's a pity he wasn't able to supplant Chip/ASCN etc., but I guess it was hard, and anyhow, all the various organizations ran by former college players started running better high school tournaments within a year or two of that, which is a more sustainable way to run a tournament than a single dude with lung problems.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<19

Post by Whippet96 »

I was on the Downingtown team that was knocked out of the 1996 NAC by Houston Memorial. West Chester East had an outstanding team back then. I wonder if Chip Beall has ever plagiarized me.
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Re: Qbhistory: High school classes & where are they now (<19

Post by tflach2 »

Edward Powers wrote:Jeff,

I was a coach here at Saint Joe's during the 1992-2000 stretch of the NAC Championships and although my memory is sometimes cloudy for much of what transpired in those "ancient years"--your earlier post did jog many of the cobwebs-- I believe I witnessed your team---Manheim Township, correct?---play another great double 400 point match against Verona HS from New Jersey in the National Semifinals---in 1996 or 1997 perhaps? Maybe 1998?

I think your team had earned the #1 Seed and yet upstart Verona---probably a # 16 seed or something like that--- was only down 10---I think 400-390---with a 15 point toss up left---and there was a buzzer race on Socrates with the answer being "hemlock"---and Verona won the race. Final score: Verona 405-Mannheim 400? I had never seen a double 400 point match before, so it was breathtaking as I recall, especially since most toss-ups led to buzzer races, as your earlier post indicated.

And I also think I remember that you & your teammates spontaneously gave Verona a standing ovation for its great play, especially in the field of music, where it was quite gifted & lightning fast. I always admired you and your team's tremendous sportsmanship that day, for it had to be a hearbreaking & unexpected loss for a school that was at or near the top of the NAC for years after your loss to East Brunswick earlier in the decade--and it also robbed you of a chance to play your Pennsy rival, State College. for National honors in the very next round, did it not?

Is my memory correct ? Or am I conflating separate years here? But if my memory is correct, did not Verona also scare the heck out of State College as well---the # 2 Seed I believe---leading SC most of the way before succumbing late in the 4th quarter? Or am I way off base here?

Anyway, thanks for the memories!
I was on that Verona team in 1998. Our main stars were the Fayanju brothers, including 1996 National Geography Bee champion Seyi. However the Hemlock answer came from Jeff Bennett, who went on to compete on the University of Chicago academic team if I am not mistaken. Yes, the next round came down to the wire in a much lower scoring game, but we lost. I was a reserve on that team as a Junior, but came back as a Senior the following year, where we had an identical 3-1 preliminary round record to 1998, but didn't even make the elimination round due to points.

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