Best Debut Performances?

[alexdz]

Reading the Greatest Upsets thread has got me thinking.

What are some of the most impressive debut performances by a person/team new to quizbowl?

Specifically, I'm not really interested in a "new" college team led by an experienced player, for example, or other cases where a person has experience and then moves to/starts a new team. This is a thread about recognizing more "raw talent" -- a person or group of people playing their first, or at least essentially their first, quizbowl tournament and rising to the occasion in a beautiful way.

I know this is the college section, but I'll offer up for recognition my 5th/6th grade team that just competed in an elementary tournament. None of them had ever played any form of organized quizbowl before besides our practice sessions, and they went an undefeated 9-0 to win the tournament in their debut performance.

[echoes in the Othersea]

I have heard that half of UWaterloo's ICT DII winning team this year had never played quiz bowl before. I cannot confirm this but consultation of the NAQT website suggests at least some of them were only recorded as playing one novice tournament before SCT. I can see how that wouldn't count as "debut" but given how they went on to win the entire DII event over a tough field filled with former high school stars, its an extraordinary run.

[CPiGuy]

Moultrie at the 2019 MSNCT had never played pyramidal quizbowl before (at least in an official tournament) and qualified via wildcard. As one might expect from a team used to playing bad one-sentence questions on a ruleset that did not include neg penalties, they negged a *lot* -- about 22% of all the tossups they heard. As one might not expect, though, they had 21.7 PPB in prelims and finished tied for 33rd in the country, not to mention their winning record (3-2) in games where they negged seven or more times!

I don't know of any other example -- and certainly not of any other recent example -- of a team with literally zero pyramidal tournament experience showing up to a good national tournament at any level, making a strong run in playoffs, and putting up legitimately good stats while doing so.

Also, apparently the two top scorers on the Waterloo team that won D2 ICT this year had not played any organized trivia before this year. That obviously wasn't directly their debut tournament but that's insanely impressive for first-year players. (Lol, scooped by Graham on this one.)

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Though he had played speed-based formats in icy New Hampshire, an unknown high school senior named Jordan Brownstein wowed a lot of people by reaching the semifinals of the 2013 National History Bee with little to no prior exposure to pyramidal questions. He hasn't really stopped wowing people since.

[Serpentine284]

chard.

[liamstarnes27]

https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... m_id=97018

Not college but there is no way this isn't the craziest debut performance ever.

[Jem Casey]

Jeff King's is surely up there; he had never before played quizbowl at any level when he put up 27.00 PPG on a challenging Illinois Open set.

[Asterias Wrathbunny]

https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/1 ... ail/#p1_22

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Jeff King's is surely up there; he had never before played quizbowl at any level when he put up 27.00 PPG on a challenging Illinois Open set.

I believe Jeff did do speed-based buzzer competitions in high school, though the vast majority of his question-answering experience comes from years of dedicated effort to get good at "trivia" (and he is extremely good at that). It was very cool to see someone from that world do well in this one!

[Cheynem]

If this is the Jeff King from the "trivia" world, he had at least played several trash tournaments (I played him at a CO Trash) before that, which certainly doesn't take away from a very successful "academic" debut.

[Tippy Martinez]

https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... m_id=27884

he was hoopin fr

[mdu]

I have heard that half of UWaterloo's ICT DII winning team this year had never played quiz bowl before. I cannot confirm this but consultation of the NAQT website suggests at least some of them were only recorded as playing one novice tournament before SCT. I can see how that wouldn't count as "debut" but given how they went on to win the entire DII event over a tough field filled with former high school stars, its an extraordinary run.

Also, apparently the two top scorers on the Waterloo team that won D2 ICT this year had not played any organized trivia before this year. That obviously wasn't directly their debut tournament but that's insanely impressive for first-year players. (Lol, scooped by Graham on this one.)

Perhaps tall tales are beginning to surround our miracle ICT run... I started playing quizbowl at the UWQB club at the beginning of the S22 semester, so about May 2022, and I got Mati to come to a meeting like the week after, so we started around the same time.

There are a few possibilities for what both our "first" college quizbowl tournaments should be, but we played Ontario Hybrid 2022 (admittedly partially trash), the Canadian summer mirrors of NASAT and HSNCT ("HS"), Collegiate Novice ("adapted HS"), as well as essentially every Canadian circuit event this year, beginning with ACF Fall, which has no blemishes on its record.

Also, I was not one of the top two scorers; Gaian outscored me in the prelims and Liam pulled ahead as well in the playoff bracket, and they've both been playing for 2+ years at this point.

It is true, however, that neither me nor Mati had played organized trivia until a year ago.

[DragonSM]

Think a noteworthy middle school level one from the past few years is this or if you count his regular qb tournament debut this. (Once again though he'd done other academic competitions but not qb specifically)

[Unicolored Jay]

I've got two that I personally witnessed. While neither example went on to win their tournament debuts, they were still shocking to me at the time. Perhaps Jarret could expand on both of these stories if he sees this post:

1. Andrei from Upper Arlington B. I don't know if Upper Arlington had ever played pyramidal quizbowl up to this point, and it's possible the team had quiz show experience since In The Know is a big thing in central Ohio, or that the school participates in other academic competitions, but putting up this kind of scoreline and keeping up with the top teams in Ohio at the time was no small feat. As far as I know this was the one and only tournament he played, although he was around for the NASAT tryouts the day after and acquitted himself well there too.

2. Kevin Bloomfield from Ohio State. I can't remember how quick the turnaround was from Jarret recruiting Kevin and DII SCT happening, but it definitely wasn't more than a couple weeks, since I don't think he came to a practice before SCT? Nevertheless, I wasn't expecting him to put the team on his shoulders with nearly double the PPG of the next highest scoring player, but after getting to know him better it was clear that he had pretty deep knowledge in classics and history just from what he was doing in college at the time. Unfortunately Kevin didn't stick around for too long after ICT that year, but he certainly left his mark.

[Halinaxus]

Sycamore's performance at MSNCT last year was pretty darn good for a team at its second tournament of its first year (and it's not like their first tournament went poorly, either).

Oh, and then there's Evan Ting, who opened his quiz bowl career by beating Sreekar Vajjha and Padraig Finan, two of this year's top middle school players, en route to finishing second while basically soloing a very strong TQBA field.

Sycamore apparently has a history of doing very well at other academic competitions, but these were still very impressive debuts.

[CPiGuy]

I have heard that half of UWaterloo's ICT DII winning team this year had never played quiz bowl before. I cannot confirm this but consultation of the NAQT website suggests at least some of them were only recorded as playing one novice tournament before SCT. I can see how that wouldn't count as "debut" but given how they went on to win the entire DII event over a tough field filled with former high school stars, its an extraordinary run.

Also, apparently the two top scorers on the Waterloo team that won D2 ICT this year had not played any organized trivia before this year. That obviously wasn't directly their debut tournament but that's insanely impressive for first-year players. (Lol, scooped by Graham on this one.)

Perhaps tall tales are beginning to surround our miracle ICT run... I started playing quizbowl at the UWQB club at the beginning of the S22 semester, so about May 2022, and I got Mati to come to a meeting like the week after, so we started around the same time.

There are a few possibilities for what both our "first" college quizbowl tournaments should be, but we played Ontario Hybrid 2022 (admittedly partially trash), the Canadian summer mirrors of NASAT and HSNCT ("HS"), Collegiate Novice ("adapted HS"), as well as essentially every Canadian circuit event this year, beginning with ACF Fall, which has no blemishes on its record.

Also, I was not one of the top two scorers; Gaian outscored me in the prelims and Liam pulled ahead as well in the playoff bracket, and they've both been playing for 2+ years at this point.

It is true, however, that neither me nor Mati had played organized trivia until a year ago.

Yeah I generally think of "this year" as meaning "this competition year" in a quizbowl context (which is apparently still not true but almost so). Sorry for the confusion.

[CabbageHugs]

TJ's phenomenal froshmore Aaryan Sumesh put up 31/10/3 at his first quiz bowl tournament ever. Which, albeit on IS-A, is extraordinary power percentage and neg control.

[nicole.]

I've been measuring this, and I have a few that I think fall under this

1. William Golden, very first tournament as a 7th grader, gets 50 powers and 128 ppg: https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... m_id=55618

2. Alex Schmidt, shows up to his first tournament as a freshman in high school, puts up 39 powers and over 100 PPG on an IS Set: https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/t ... m_id=72720

3. Shawn Cafferty-Lueck (Russellville/UArkansas fame), mostly unknown History Bowl Star, plays his first pyramidal style tournament on a nearly Regs_ Scottie Set, gets 48 powers and over 100 PPG overall: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6 ... etail/#t18

I would also consider Leya from Interlake B, who got 146 PPG and won her first tournament, Bird Hole from this year, although SANDS notably skewed easy: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7 ... InterlakeB

[AGoodMan]

Luke Minton's debut HSNCT performance in his senior year (2016) should be up there. I really think he could have been an elite player if he cared about quiz bowl even a little bit.