The Quizbowl Resource Center

There's a lot of labor that goes into making quizbowl possible, and in particular a lot of organizational work that has to take place. Because organizational skill doesn't have any particular correlation with quizbowl skill, great organizers tend to fly under the radar. I'd like to use this thread as a chance to recognize some of those people for what they do.

I'll start with Sarang Yeola, who recently graduated from Maryland after having been president of the Maryland Academic Quiz Team for the past three years. From both a competitive and an organizational standpoint, the past three years have been among the most successful in the history of Maryland quizbowl, and by and large that's the result of Sarang's work. Sarang has done excellent work with the club's finances, with room reservations, with organizing logistics to get teams to tournaments (often in challenging circumstances), and in making sure that the club is a welcoming place socially for everyone. Anyone who has had the chance to work with Sarang can attest to his competence and professionalism.

Sarang will be headed to the University of Colorado next year. Without a doubt he'll be a great asset to quizbowl in the Rocky Mountains, but Maryland will miss him dearly. No one person will be able to fill all the roles that he combined.

The current executive board of the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance deserves a ton of kudos, and in particular our current president Jeffrey Hill. Jeff does an incredible amount of behind the scenes work to organize and promote several tournaments a year on campuses he isn't affiliated with, which is a monumental task in and of itself. At the same time, his steadfast and measured leadership style has allowed MOQBA to grow smoothly and navigate institutional and bureaucratic hurdles. Recently, Jeff and the other executive board members (Jacob O'Rourke and Jason Loy) secured 501(c)(3) status for the group, which will be a great asset moving forward. Jacob has taken the lead in improving the St. Louis-area circuit and to build cross-state relationships with downstate Illinois teams. Jason sparked the incredible growth of Missouri's middle school circuit and has worked to improve it as well as the high school game. In 10 years of MOQBA's existence, these three have been constant leaders. In their own times, they were also outstanding players, but I dare say their longest-lasting and greatest contributions to quizbowl will have been in the realm of organization and circuit improvement.

A lot of Mountain West people have done some pretty impressive circuit building, and they need to be thanked for it!

Colin McNamara deserves recognition for everything he's done at Boise State. For the past decade, Colin has been the driving force behind the Boise high school circuit and has helped develop college quizbowl throughout much of the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest. I was extremely lucky to play quizbowl in Boise, primarily due to Colin's work.

I should also thank Niki Peters for getting a ton of people in the Boise area (including me) to care about quizbowl. In addition, she's one of the best moderators out there, and from what I've heard, she's done a ton to improve the northern California circuit.

Jordan Boyd-Graber and Jason Freng should also be recognized for getting quizbowl started in Colorado, both at the high school and college levels. They've laid the groundwork our current outreach campaign, and I most likely would not have played in college if they had not started a team here.

Fred Morlan seems to have brought NASAT back from the brink.

Jeffrey Hill also deserves a tremendous amount of recognition for the work he's done updating this website over the past several years. He developed the original stats hosting framework for good own site, and then developed and implemented that and packet hosting here. This site has been a resource now for over 15 years, and much of the reason for its longetivity beyond the existence of the forums is due to Jeffery's work.