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by Jem Casey » Wed May 10, 2017 5:05 pm
I am late here as always, but wanted to shout out my teammates for being very good at their categories, since their countless hours of work and elite specialism may have been somewhat obscured by the stats and their bad luck on ACF Nationals 2017 – Editors’ Finals 1 (which was by far the worst packet for them that we played all year). I thought this thread would be more appropriate for describing their strengths as specialists, but you should absolutely consider voting for all of them in the main player poll as well.
Weijia Cheng: Weijia is the best religion player in the country, and probably the best by a large margin (and, as such, should be on your player poll ballot). Because of him, Maryland got every religion question at Nats (13 in a row) until Sam and I decided to start buzzing in the Michigan games. Also an elite econ and a good history player, with some generalist firepower that unfortunately went untapped on this year's Maryland A (not next year's, though!). I'd argue that none of the title-contending teams, given Weijia in 2016 and an understanding of his strengths as a player and studier, could reasonably have left him off their 2016-17 A team, since he can become truly unstoppable on any categories you tell him to learn (which, again, should earn him a spot on your player poll ballot).
Ophir Lifshitz: a top 5 music player, an elite linguist, and one of the best at his other science subcategories, astro and cs. Ophir got every music tossup he heard for three tournaments in a row (WAO, SCT, regs), then destroyed a bunch of music at TTIAC, where he also went 2/1/0 to win our first "Chicago A" game. He's a bit more subdistribution-dependent than most specialists, so his stuff not coming up at Nats hurt his statline. Will also get other random humanities things without really knowing what they are ("What's Mysore?"--Ophir, on powering a Mysore tossup against Michigan at "housewrite").
Sam Rombro: As has been pointed out above, Sam improved a lot this year, becoming an indisputably a great physics player and a top science player in general. Take a look at his ICT stats; dude got exactly two tossups--mostly science, with some good naqt category buzzes thrown in--in every game of the playoffs (not counting the, uh, 4 he got against McGill). After the prelims he had six powers, more or as many as a bunch of players who'll rank above him in the poll. This is a good person to have on your quizbowl team.
Last edited by
Jem Casey on Sun May 28, 2017 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jordan Brownstein, University of Maryland '17, Plymouth Regional '13, New Hampshire
"Calm is the one thing that will never let us down"--2666