Author: vrohan

Varsity				Junior Varsity
Rank	Team	Record	PPB	Rank	Team	Record	PPB
1	Westview A	10-1	22.95	1	Del Norte C	10-0	20.40
2	Del Norte A	8-3	21.01	2	Westview C	8-2	18.75
3	Arcadia	9-1	20.00	3	Del Norte D	6-4	17.87
4	Westview B	6 – 4	17.45	4	Santa Monica	4-6	18.40

Individual performance:

Varsity				Junior Varsity
Rank	Name	Team	Prelim PPG	Rank	Name	Team	Prelim PPG
1	Amogh Kulkarni	Arcadia	99.00	1	Kumail Afshar	Del Norte C	53.85
2	Shahar Schwartz	Westview B	92.00	2	Alex Patterson	Bonita	53.00
3	Nathaniel Kang	St. Margaret’s Episcopal	89.00	3	Ben Makarechian	Los Gatos	42.86
4	Kyle Ke	Del Norte A	67.00	4	Madhumita Narayan	Del Norte C	41.43

 

HFT. UCSD. Strong field. Interesting tournament. Let’s begin!

Westview A: We managed to win again, with 7.3 powers per game and 23.15 PPB before the finals packet. Shahar was especially good on literature, regularly getting early powers, while Junu also proved his skill on a housewrite, where there is less history and geography than there is on NAQT, by putting up 15 powers across 11 games alongside Shahar’s 51. Another positive thing to note is that Nicholas went from a negative PPG in prelims to over 14 PPG in playoffs. Another thing is that our neg count was pretty high overall, as we had 17 negs over the first three rounds and 39 in total over 11. If we can manage to lower that, hopefully we can keep this win streak up.

Del Norte A: Del Norte, despite missing Ajai, made finals in yet another tournament, handily beating us when we went against them in playoffs. Specifically, Joshua has become very, very good at science, and the housewrite distribution assists Kyle’s lockdown coverage of music. Despite playing with only three players, Del Norte A was able to put up 6.1 powers per game and 21.48 PPB before finals, along with 2 negs per game. The fact that Del Norte is able to put up such high power numbers while maintaining a low neg count is part of what makes them such a formidable team; this, coupled with their uncanny ability to get lots of bonus parts that they might not actually know, makes them extremely scary.

Arcadia: Arcadia still has not sent any of their seniors to a tournament yet, but their team of Michael, Amogh, Brian, and Ryan performed extremely well at Triton Fall. Amogh and Ryan combined for 66 powers across 10 games, to only 20 negs, and the team had 20 PPB across their 10 games. When the team gains more coverage in the form of Stephen Dai, Vincent Kurniawidjaja, Spencer Cheng, and more, they will be especially scary—I am excited to see just how good they will be.

Westview B: Westview B performed really well, only losing to us, Del Norte A, and Arcadia. Literature, fine arts, and philosophy player Daniel Jung had 49 PPG in prelims, and when Aakarsh came in the afternoon, the team had incredibly balanced scoring. With the four of them, they put up 18.48 PPB in playoffs, proving that they had solid coverage of lots of the distribution.

Del Norte B and North Hollywood rounded out the champs bracket. Literature player Sofia put up 41 PPG on Del Norte B, and Hannah had a power a game, while the team had 16.63 PPB; Heather and Albert formed the backbone of NoHo’s scoring and they had 16.53 PPB across all rounds in the tournament.

In the consolation bracket, Scripps put up really good power numbers in the afternoon rounds, and Nate Kang led St. Margarets’s scoring with 86 PPG and 21 powers in 10 rounds. It was also good to see Francis Parker and La Jolla attend their first tournament, and OLP seems to be attending more tournaments now that they have started their club. CCA’s underclassmen did pretty well, combining for 18 powers alongside Jonathan’s 10.

JV time!

First off, UCSD somehow fit all seven prelim rounds before lunch, with lunch starting on time as well, resulting in the entire JV tournament ending at around 3PM. Argue all you want about A set questions being short, but that is an amazing accomplishment in itself.

Del Norte C: Kumail led all individuals in prelim PPG with 53.85, and Madhumita backed him up well, exceedingly so after Round 6, getting 10 out of her 14 total powers during those rounds. The team’s 439.5 PPG was a full 155.5 above the next best team, Westview C, and their PPB of 20.72 was 3.35 above Westview C’s. The team was absolutely dominant throughout the tournament, getting at least 13 tossups in every game except for one. It remains to be seen how well they scale up to harder question sets, but their neg rate of less than 2 negs per game will do nothing but help them win games there as well.

Westview C: Westview C was decidedly the second best team at the tournament, with 2.7 powers per game and 17.35 PPB. James, Rohan, and Aiken were all extremely close to each other PPG-wise, and they did not neg a lot.

Del Norte D: Abdullah and Devam led them in scoring, and they managed to take 9 tossups against Westview C in round 10, showing that they are capable of playing better than their stats might suggest. They only lost to Del Norte C and Westview C, proving that they are capable of beating the teams that they are better than.

Santa Monica: Santa Monica has sent an assortment of JV teams to tournaments this year, and this one played decently at Triton Fall. Despite getting 10 tossups in a game only once in the tournament, they were able to beat all teams that didn’t make it to champs bracket.

Senior Alex Patterson ended as the highest scorer overall with 55 PPG while leading Bonita to a 6-4 record, and Yasaswi played well on Del Norte E, managing over a power a game. It was good to see Valley Center at another tournament, and quite surprising to see NorCal school Los Gatos show up to a SoCal tournament.

I probably missed something, so if I did, please tell me, and I will try to add it when I get the time.

Thanks to everyone for coming, and I hope to see you at future tournaments!

Teams				Individuals (Prelims)
Rank	Team	PPB	Record	Rank	Player	Team	PPG
1	WV A	23.87	10-1	1	Shahar S.	WV A	78.33
2	Del Norte	23.81	7-4	2	Kyle K.	Del Norte	58.33
3	Canyon Crest	21.46	7-2	3	Pramod S.	WV B	55.68
4	WV B	17.36	4-5	4	Adrian O.	Otay Ranch	54.17

*Note: I think Del Norte actually finished with a PPB that was higher than ours, but there might be an error in stats that is bringing it down.

Firstly, I would like to thank Olympian High School for directing quite a wonderful tournament. It finished before 4:30 and there were 11 rounds played, which is quite impressive, even more so because the two tournament directors, Dayo and Chanwoo, had never directed a tournament before. They were incredibly nice, and they adapted very well to changes that had to be made mid-tournament.

Now, let’s get into the actual tournament:

Westview A: We were shorthanded, with only three players, but we still managed to win all our games in prelims and playoffs (not including finals.) Shahar and Junu both exhibited their skill in categories all across the board, especially Shahar in literature and science and Junu in history and geography. One thing is that our neg count, at nearly three per game, was slightly high, but that is something we have always needed to work on. Another thing was that our PPB in current events and US History was significantly lower than our PPB in all the other categories, but with our A team not being finalized yet and a large group of good players in the club, I am sure we will be able to come up with a team that can fill those holes, especially on NAQT where those categories are significantly more prevalent.

Del Norte: So we played Del Norte five(!!) times during the tournament, and all of the games were relatively close (except for the first final, but more on that later.) As far as I know, this was a full Del Norte A team, and they are really, really good. Always known as the team that does not neg often, this tournament was no different, as they averaged barely over 1.5 negs per game. What made this specific tournament different, though, was that they backed it up with nearly 5.5 powers per game. Kyle is decidedly the best music player in SoCal this year, and between him, Ajai, Manasvi, and Joshua, they have coverage of basically every category. Ajai is strikingly good at “stuff that will almost exclusively be only asked about in NAQT,” and all four of them tag team very well on history. They also wrecked us 560-135 in the first final, proving that, at times, they can be quite unstoppable.

Canyon Crest: CCA spent essentially all their prelim rounds memeing, dubiously negging on some tossups while also trying to help Jonathan accomplish his goal of maintaining a 100% power percentage (which he indeed did while also getting three powers per game.) Basically, it is safe to say that although this team has been very vocal about not caring nearly as much about Quizbowl as they did in the past, they are very good, and these stats are not completely to be trusted when trying to gauge their strength. With Wesley  not being there, and this CCA team being one that tends to perform better at harder difficulties, I advise to not base one’s opinion on them off of their stats at this tournament alone.

Westview B: Westview B impressed at the tournament, holding their own in a brutal champs bracket consisting of Westview A, Del Norte, and Canyon Crest. Freshman Pramod led them with 17 powers while only playing 7.4 games since he got stuck in traffic in the morning, and he was supported well by Jonathan, Rohan, and Aakarsh, the latter of whom is quickly improving at literature. The team had a really promising 17.36 PPB, making them a definite threat at future tournaments. Also, from what I heard, they had incredibly good coverage on pop culture/trash, which is certainly not a nonfactor on NAQT questions.

Otay Ranch: It is good to see that the Quizbowl program at Otay Ranch is still active, although they are overwhelmingly led by Adrian Ople, as evidenced by him scoring more than 74% of the points his team got on tossups. I have never seen him play, but he seems to have a good amount of breadth in his knowledge–he converted 15 out of 20 tossups against one of the Olympian house teams–but maybe not as much depth. This breadth greatly assisted him in the consolation bracket, where he got almost 114 PPG and was able to beat Serra to claim fifth place in the tournament. Hopefully Otay attends more tournaments this year so we will be able to learn more about the strengths of Adrian and his teammates.

Serra: By finishing third and 12th at BONoBo the week earlier, Serra proved that they were formidable on lower-difficulty SCOP Novice. At OASIS, Tyler led them with seven powers and 44.50 PPG, and the rest of the team contributed 9 more powers. Their PPB through their 10 rounds was 17.16, suggesting that their strength may lie there. Just like Otay Ranch, I’d have to see Serra at more tournaments in order to be able to gauge their strengths and weaknesses; they have already attended two out of three this year so let’s hope that this is a positive trend.

Olympian’s house teams were added at the last second due to drops (proving the flexibility of the TDs once more), and that is all I can really say about them.

Great job to all teams, and see you at Triton Fall!

This is the current Southern California high school tournament schedule for the 2020-21 school year. The dates and question sets are subject to change. The upcoming year is especially uncertain due to COVID-19, so many regional tournaments will be taking place online. Tournaments will be added as the situation develops. Contact ajgray@ucsd.edu for more info.

Date	Tournament Name	Host	Question Set
10 Oct	California Novice	SCQBA + NCQBA	TAILS
14 Nov	Triton Fall	UCSD	LONE STAR, IS 194-A