Month: October 2018

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CCA Wins Triton Fall in Disadvantaged Final Against Arcadia

 

Teams Individuals
Rank Team Record PPB Rank Player Team  PPG
1 CCA B 10 – 1 23.91 1 Shahar S. Westview 108.46
2 Arcadia A 8 – 3 21.82 2 Andrew H. Arcadia A 96.36
3 Scripps Ranch 6 – 3 17.59 3 Raymond S. CCA B 87.27
4 Del Norte A 5 – 4 19.40 4 Jack I. Scripps Ranch 62.22

With Triton Fall 2018 in the books, the players of SoCal got their first taste of mACF style questions, with exciting results. Of course, none of this would be possible without the wonderful people at UCSD, who I would like to thank for running the tournament this Saturday.

CCA B (which was made up of quite a few players expected to start on A team at nationals this year) won the day with an astounding 9.5 powers per game. The team was led by humanities specialist Raymond Song (11), with significant support from history and geo man Wesley Zhang (11), and a formidable science player in Jonothan Hsieh (11). If this is

Arcadia A came in at second despite beating CCA 440-230 earlier in the playoffs, which they managed to do with only two A team players from PPT. History main Andrew Hoagland (12) managed to lead the team to a solid finish even with half the normal A team being MIA. With a complete team, Arcadia has the ability to get revenge on CCA, but that will have to wait for another day.

Del Norte continues to show off just how much they’ve improved over the summer, with fine arts-centered generalist Kyle Ke (11) and science player Josh You (10) leading the charge. Even without core lit player Sofia Luengo (11), Del Norte A was able to make playoffs by pulling upsets (?) against Arcadia A and Westview. Del Norte’s main problem going forward is that while they hardly neg, which they did less than once per game, they also power somewhat rarely. If they can fix this, I can see Del Norte becoming a top-tier team by the time next year rolls around.

Scripps Ranch was led by generalist Jack Izzo (12), who carried the team to a third-place finish by upsetting Del Norte in the playoffs. While Scripps did play very well in the wake of the graduation of longtime captain Joon Lee, they still have some problems to deal with, as they were the only team in playoffs with more negs than powers. If Jack and company can figure out a way to transform those negs into consistent early powers, Scripps Ranch could emerge as a dark horse in this year’s tournaments.

It was also great to see teams from Mission Bay, Cathedral Catholic, and University City come to compete, and we look forward to competing with you more in the future!

In terms of individual awards, Scripps’ Jack barely missed the podium, with CCA’s Raymond taking third place, Arcadia’s Andrew taking second, and some random guy from Westview (11) getting first. The SoCal field is looking stronger than ever, with several young teams putting numbers similar to those of the top teams in the nation. With CCA, Arcadia, and Westview still yet to have a complete tournament with a full A team roster, I predict that the level of play from here on out is only going to go up.

High School Quizbowl

Del Norte A and Westview C win PPT II

Varsity Junior Varsity
Rank Team Record PPB Rank Team Record PPB
1 Del Norte A 8 – 2 22.30 1 Westview C 9 – 1 20.40
2 Olympian A 9 – 1 21.34 2 Francis Parker A 7 – 2 18.75
T – 3 Westview A 7 – 2 20.10 3 Francis Parker B 7 – 3 17.87
T – 3 Westview B 6 – 3 19.48 4 Del Norte C 5 – 4 18.40

Individual performance:

Varsity Junior Varsity
Rank Name Team Prelim PPG Rank Name Team Prelim PPG
1 Andrew Hoagland (12) Arcadia A 93.00 1 Zachary Partnoy (9) Francis Parker A 86.67
2 Junu Song (11) Westview B 85.00 2 Ari Mazow (9) Westview C 57.50
3 Shahar Schwartz (11) Westview A 78.00 3 Jesse Smith (9) Francis Parker B 56.67
4 Andrew Feng (11) Canyon Crest 63.75 4 Rohin Buch (9) Francis Parker A 36.67

SoCal’s season opened strong with CCA’s Powered Points Tournament (PPT). Firstly, I would like to acknowledge both Shreyank Kadadi and Raymond Song, who directed this tournament very well despite events which hindered the possibility of them doing so.

Next, congratulations to Del Norte A for winning a varsity tournament for the first time! They seem to be a formidable team that rarely negs, a quality which made up for the fact that they were out-powered by four other teams in the field. Kyle Ke (11) keeps improving every year, and I was able to see the full ability of Joshua You (10) when he dropped 4 powers on us in round 5. Since there are no seniors on the team, they will be able to spend more time building chemistry with the current team.

Olympian A seems to have rebuilt strongly and quickly from last year, when 10 out of their 12 HSNCT team members graduated. They are similar to Del Norte in that they also neg very rarely. One thing I noticed while playing them is that they seem to be very specialized, with Athina Rosure (12) taking literature, Jake Blankenbecler (11) history and geography, and Kaia Yager (12) science. Olympian generally gears themselves toward NAQT questions, and it will be exciting to see how they perform in future tournaments.

If one looked exclusively at the prelim stats for the tournament, they would notice that Arcadia A out-powered the next best team by 7 powers, despite not even playing one of their games due to a forfeit. Additionally, their PPB was second only to eventual champions Del Norte A. However, Andrew Hoagland (12), William Shue (12), and Michael Huang (12) all left at lunch to go back to Arcadia for homecoming, and although we weren’t able to see how the three of them would have performed in the playoffs, a two-man team of Spencer Cheng (11) and Sean Ye (12) took a game off Del Norte A. It will be interesting to see how they can build upon last year’s 12th place HSNCT finish, but it looks like they have found their replacements for Roger Lin (’18) and Hamlin Liu (’18).

In terms of individual performances, Andrew had a very strong one as usual, while Shahar Schwartz (11) and Junu Song (11) did excellent jobs leading Westview A and B respectively to T-3rd place; the three of them were the only people in the field to average more than 3 powers per game. In addition, Sam Kaseff (12) showed his ability to really pop off for La Jolla, getting 12 powers in the last two games.

The novice division was dominated by three members of Francis Parker’s MSNCT team last year. Ari Mazow (9) moved schools and led Westview C to 1st place in the novice division, his former teammate Zach Partnoy (9) handily led the field in PPG, powering Francis Parker A to 2nd place, and Jesse Smith (9) put in a 3rd place individual performance on Francis Parker B. Ari, Zach, and Andrew Jia (10) from Westview D were the players who were able to amass double digit power numbers. Finishing 4th was Del Norte C, a team that largely consisted of freshmen from established middle school programs, namely Black Mountain and Oak Valley. It will be interesting to see how their prior quizbowl experience will help them at the high school level.

This tournament was a success, and I was glad to see so many good performances across both divisions.