Month: June 2019

2019 NASAT Wrap-Up (6/23-24)

Two Pennsylvania teams, each composed of a mix of graduating seniors and returning underclassman talent, represented the state at the 2019 National All-Star Academic Tournament. Coached on-site by Jamie Faeder (Allderdice ’18), these players had a fun experience to close out the 2018-19 quizbowl season!

Pennsylvania Blue, composed of Jakobi Deslouches (Allderdice), Noah Harrigan (Great Valley), Will Yaeger (Hempfield), and Ryan Zhang (Hempfield), made the top playoff bracket by way of a thrilling tiebreaker victory over Missouri A that came down to the final tossup. They also notched wins over Maryland Gold, Oklahoma, and Kentucky. While the team did not score any additional victories in that top playoff bracket, I give them all the credit nonetheless for making it there, as NASAT is a tournament unlike any other at the high school level. Congrats to PA Blue!

Pennsylvania Gold, composed of Austin Davis (Allderdice), Connor Mayers (Penn Manor), Anshu Nunemunthala (Great Valley), and Malaika Paralkar (Downingtown East) defeated Iowa in the preliminary rounds for their sole win on Saturday. However, they ended the tournament strong, with consecutive victories over Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Missouri B. Connor also finished as the 10th top individual scorer in the prelim rounds and 9th after all games. Congrats to him and to PA Gold as well!

With the end of this tournament, our exciting 2018-19 season of quizbowl in Pennsylvania has reached its conclusion. We’ve seen plenty of great players, great matches, and great stories this year, and it looks as though we are poised for another exciting season to come! Have a safe, fun, and knowledge-filled summer, and we hope to see you back for our coverage of the 2019-2020 year!

–Ryan

GPQB Membership Status Changes

This is an announcement of two changes to our writing staff for the upcoming offseason and season:

  • Emily Dickson has resigned from GPQB. We thank her for her work with the site and wish her the best in future endeavors.
  • Chris Chiego has returned from sabbatical and will be active on site posts for the 2019-2020 season.

-The Staff

GPQB End of Season Poll, 2018-2019

Dear Readers,

Another wonderful season of quizbowl has come to a close. This one was filled with so many stories and close games, it is hard to recount them all. We had some of the toughest competition out there yet, and almost every program came home with a win or three they’ll treasure forever. As is always the case, we close the season with our end of season poll, and crown the official GPQB State Champion. All of these teams deserve praise for their hard work and excellent knowledge over the season. Unless specified (and you’ll need to pay attention to some footnotes here), these teams are the “A” team for their school. Without further ado, here is the last poll of the 18-19 season:

  1. Hempfield (190 points, +6, unanimous #1)
  2. Henderson (166 points, +2)
  3. Allderdice A (148 points, -2)
  4. Friends Select (138 points, +4)
  5. State College (107 points, -3)
  6. Penn Manor (100 points, -1)
  7. Manheim Township (78 points, -1)
  8. Great Valley A* (46 points, +3)
  9. Winchester Thurston (38 points, +7)
  10. Great Valley B* (17 points, -7)

Also receiving votes were Allderdice B (16) and Trinity (1)

Congratulations to state champions, Hempfield High School! We hope all Pennsylvania quizbowl teams had tons of fun this year at whatever events they played, and that they learned a lot and built great friendships along the way. We wish all seniors the best in their next step, and look forward to seeing underclassmen again buzzing away this fall. Happy summer!

-The Staff

* The team we have ranked 8th played as Great Valley’s B team the whole year. Based on their performance at nationals, the collective panelists ranked them higher than their school’s A team. It is our polling philosophy that a “B” team cannot be better than an “A” team, for if so they have then surpassed and become their school’s A team. Therefore, we have labeled them as we did for this poll.

The Voters for this poll were: Sameer Apte, Ruel Beresford, Ryan Bilger, Ben Cushing, Chris Chiego, Jack Edmondson, Jamie Faeder, Ben Herman, Antonio Jimenez, Ashish Kumbhardare, Sebastien La Duca, Nick Luca, Andrew Nadig, Colton Sanden, Alex Sankaran, Steven Silverman, Adam Swift, and Jackie Wu

Announcement: PA NASAT Teams 2019

On behalf of the PA NASAT committee, we are happy to announce the selections for this year’s National All-Star Scholastic Tournament, to be held this June 22-23 at the University of Kentucky. NASAT pits teams consisting of the best players from each state against each other in a head-to-head setting. The event uses difficult collegiate questions and many of its players have gone on to outstanding careers in collegiate and higher level quizbowl. This is the only all-star tournament to highlight teams on a state-by-state basis.

After participating in a tryout process, team candidates were selected based on their statistics by a panel of college players and staffers in the state. Without further ado:

Pennsylvania Blue
Jakobi Deslouches, Allderdice
Noah Harrigan, Great Valley
Rishi Raman, Great Valley
Will Yaeger, Hempfield
Albert Zhang, State College

Pennsylvania Gold
Austin Davis, Allderdice
Connor Mayers, Penn Manor
Anshu Nunemunthala, Great Valley
Malaika Paralkar, Downingtown East
Ryan Zhang, Hempfield

We congratulate all these excellent quizbowlers for their fantastic specialist knowledge during tryouts and commend the hard work put in by the students and their coaches, teachers, parents, and mentors. We look forward to cheering on team PA in Lexington, KY later this month!