The Ohio Quizbowl Forum

I got this idea from somewhere else. I can't remember if its HSQB or one of Ohio's hs sports forums, but I know I read this idea before.

Initially, this concept may only seem to 'make sense' if a school a pretty long history of playing quiz bowl. However, I am curious to see what all schools consider to be the 'four best' players in their history. Even though not every school has made the state finals, for example, I am still curious to see what teams consider to be their 'legendary' players. Criteria such as performance in league, regional, or even television play can certainly be a good and fair way of promoting great players of yesteryear. Every school arguably has, at minimum, some semblance of a 'wonder years' period with particular players leading their team to victory at any level of competition. The general idea behind this is a) promoting history on this board and b) for schools to recognize their own tradition. Tradition doesn't always have to be measured in regional titles or 1st/2nd place finishes at OAC or NAQT... after all, that would be a pretty exclusive way to define 'tradition', wouldn't it?

A school need not have one poster exclusively define their schools' "four greatest"; in other words, contributions from multiple posters for an individual school are welcomed.

So, who goes on Mt. Rushmore for your school?

I'll start this with Fisher.


Sarah Hickman - years active: 2001-2004. Notable accomplishments: only player in F.C. history to be named a PACE NSC All-Star (2004.); 2004 OAC State Champion; captained the F.C. A team that won 'Battle of the Burgh VI', which notably featured the thrilling upset of State College A (who was then coached by the legendary Julie Gittings) in the finals.

Arguably the greatest literature player in FC's history, and possibly one of the state of Ohio's all-time best literature players, Sarah was by all accounts a force to be reckoned with at the local, regional, and state levels. I'm not entirely sure of the chronology of Ohio quiz bowl as it relates to the gender, but I believe I'm correct in saying Sarah is one of only a few female quiz bowlers in Ohio's history to captain their squad to a state title.

Christine Kennedy - years active: 2002-2005. Notable accomplishments: 2004 OAC State Champion, second-place finisher in the 2007 Jeopardy! College Tournament while a student at Notre Dame (doing so at the age of 19.)

There are more than four people deserving of the four spots for FC, in my opinion, but I definitely have to include Christine: until Jim Coury (of Olmsted Falls/Georgetown U) won the tournament in 2013, Christine was the highest finisher from the Buckeye State on College Jeopardy.

Steven Wellstead - years active: 2004-2007. Notable accomplishments: 2004 and 2006 OAC State Champion, 2006 NAQT State Champion (Division II); first freshman in Fisher history to captain his squad to a winning record at a Saturday event; one of the first players to be ever 'hand-selected' to represent Team Ohio at either NTAE or NASAT; helped fuel and keep alive the Case Western team during his freshman year (according to QBWiki.)

Steven was pretty solid as a high school player, particularly in geography and art. As a college freshman, Steven scored second individually in the D2 portion of the 2008 Sectional Championship Tournament. In general, Steven was pretty good at his subjects and is definitely one of the most accomplished players between high school and college quizbowl to come from FC.

Brandon Shull - years active: 2011-2015. Notable accomplishments: 2013 State of Ohio History Bowl champion; only player in Fisher history to captain a team to a playoffs win at HSNCT (3-2 record as captain on HSNCT Sunday); only player in Fisher history to be named an HSNCT All-Star (2015); only player in Fisher history to start on all four Fisher squads that attended OAC States in four years; all-time leader in powers in school history; all-time highest points scorer in school history.

Brandon is definitely one of the best players in school history. History was Brandon's strength, but he was also particularly good at the majority of subjects and he was pretty good on harder material. On paper, Brandon's stats would likely be a lot more impressive if it weren't for the fact him and I had so much overlap in the three years we played with each other. I was always amazed by some of the buzzes Brandon would pull on some of the tougher, more unusual answerlines such as at HSNCT. More aptly, Brandon was one hell of a teammate and is too cool of a guy to not like.


I included 'notable accomplishments' as my a criteria to help shape my own rankings simply because three of the players listed played in the predominant OAC era of nearly 10 years ago, so it was in essence a good tool to help explain why I have x player listed.

Share 'em!

_________________
Thomas Moore
Ohio Wesleyan '18

Retired from online, for good.

Tom - any list of best players at Fisher needs to include you, and I don't think anyone would argue that. I do however, respect you including yourself on your own list. That said, I was only a halfway decent player at GHHS and all of the following would have crushed me head to head.

For GHHS, there were a lot of great players who preceded me but in that era, the team basically only played OAC events and Chipbowl nationals, so I'll not mention most of them.

John Presloid (1996-2000) - One of the very few freshmen to ever start on GHHS's A-team. Was a member of two state runner-up squads and would've been easily the best player in Ohio if not for a certain Copley stud named Brandon Eilertson. For a team that mainly played OAC, he was extremely good at dissecting pyramidal questions early. Great history and trash player.

Jon Geisinger (2001-05) - Jon was a freshman the year after I graduated and showed early signs of promise. He was a really good biology and history player and captained my first tournament-winning team (Solon 2005). His senior year, he was one of the top players in the state behind Noah Rahman (Solon) and Zach Witeof (Tipp) and led us to a 7-1 record against Solon, the NAQT state runner-up trophy and a northeast regional title.

Jim Hrdlicka (2002-06) - Jim, who remains one of my best friends to this day, is perhaps the best history player I ever coached. He was the leading scorer at most tournaments we attended from his sophomore year onward including outdueling Joel Knight several times at Case tournaments. He led us our first NAQT state title in 2006 and narrowly missed an OAC state trip after we lost while playing undermanned on a RECOGNITION! penalty at the northeast regional. He was also an exceptionally good lit, current events and trash player. He served as a great role model for perhaps the best player in GHHS history...

Dan Humphrey (2004-2008) - I personally recruited Dan to be on the team out of our middle school along with another fantastic player, Joe Wells. As freshmen, him and Joe played as a two-man GHHS B team at NAQT states in 2005, winning several matches against other stellar teams. He joined the A-team in fall 2005 and teamed with Jim, Joe and Zeke Watson to win our first NAQT state title. Dan was an incredible self-made player who was fantastic in literature, history and biology and taught himself AP chemistry and other subjects that GHHS lacked. In 2007, he led us to a surprising OAC state final victory over Steven Wellstead and Fisher Catholic and in 2008, led us to becoming the first team to capture the OAC and NAQT state titles in the same year. I can say that Dan would edge out Jim to be considered the best quizbowl player in GHHS history.

Joe Wells (2004-2008) - I'm including Joe on this list because he also was a self-made player. It took a little bit of time for it to click, but Joe began to study hard his junior year and actually played several tournaments solo and as the "B" team captain to help him work on buzzer speed and to become more well-rounded. He was one of, if not the best trash player I've ever coached and was solid in lit, fine arts and biology as well. I always liked to refer to him as Dan's comic foil, since they liked to argue about things constantly, but my favorite Joe moment was when Dan answered the first 19 lightning round questions in a league match and Joe buzzed in on the 20th question after hearing 1 word and said "I don't know the answer, I just don't want Dan to get all 20 correct".

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Bob Kilner
Chief Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008)
Coach, North High School (2015-)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10

I'm going to let individual coaches promote their programs, but when I think about some of the bigger programs, the following names come to mind:

Walnut Hills: Jacob Durst, Lei Fan, Peter Komarek
Northmont: Sam Blizzard, Michael Czupryn, Joe Czupryn, Kara Combs, Brandon Williams
Copley: so many... but Brandon Eilertson, Chris Mayer, Dennis Butcher, Bob Shott, Mike Shott, Bill Cole, Aaron [last name I forgot], Saajid Moyen, among others
Solon: Noah Rahman, Jasper Lee, Rohin Devanathan, Ajay Pillai
Tipp: Zach Witeof, Ryan Haas, Katie Haas, Doug Slocum, Jack Zhao, Laurel Spangler
St Charles: Alex and pretty much his whole 03 team who were ridiculously balanced, Allan Joseph, Zel Demere...

People from teams with only a few great players over the years: Brianna Prislipsky (South Range), Jarret Greene (South Range), Michael Coates (Harding), Ike Jose (Stow)

There's lots more and many I'm missing so chime in coaches.

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Bob Kilner
Chief Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008)
Coach, North High School (2015-)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10

^ This story is truly gold.

For Miami Valley, I would say our Mount Rushmore is very much a work in progress...one could argue it's still merely a chunk of hill. I've actually tried to put together some research last night and today on the pre-2005 history of the program, but all I've managed to figure out is that we played mostly TV shows mixed in with maybe a couple Sidney Social Studies Shootouts over the years (remember those?). Records show that MVS did win WHIO's High-Q game show in 1995-96, so if there was a leading member of that team they should probably get a spot just for being a Venerable Ancestor...the '96 yearbook makes no mention of this sparkling achievement. If anyone remembers anything from this period, let me know!

When I was a freshman ('05-'06), MVS won High-Q again behind a couple seniors, John Nelson and Kevin Hendricks...we were down a ton of points to Tippecanoe and somehow Kevin strung together like six final round questions to steal the game. So sentimentally, Kevin should be considered for a spot, even though John was the captain and definitely a better academic player, on the condition that Kevin be depicted with his head in a television box graphic with his name underneath.

For '06 on, we start to have some statistical records from NAQT (our first tossup-bonus tournament was the inaugural Rowdy Raider in '07), and we were playing at least a couple OAC events at that point (I feel like we never played Regionals, probably because we didn't qualify). High-Q was still the big draw, and the next three years we consecutively got blitzed by Tipp in the finals, lost a close match to Carroll in the finals, and got beat by Carroll in the next year's Final Four. In Saturday tournaments, I scored a lot of points by waiting until the end of questions and matching up titles and names. If I get a spot on the mountain, I mandate that it be carved literally on the surface of the rock like a caricature in honor of my surface knowledge.

Ideally, any of us to actually make it on our respective mountains should be biding our time until the next generation comes along and tries to dynamite us off. Even though his freshman season is still in progress, I think John John Groger has to have a spot in our top four (really, top one) already, and I feel like Max Mader should be considered for a spot also for the role he's played in re-developing our program in the last three years. On principle, discussion on those two (and William Groger, who has some high school questions under his belt already) should wait. Hopefully the rest of their careers will be bear me out here!

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Tyler Benedict
Coach, Miami Valley School MS Quiz
Assistant, Miami Valley School HS Quiz
Miami Valley School '09

Coming from a much less established program than others, we never had the quiz bowl culture of schools like Northmont, Solon, or Copley. With that being said, however, Boardman has been a consistent contender ever since joining the Mahoning Valley league in 2005, and I was surprised to find out that the team has existed for longer than I had expected. We don't have too many "legendary" players to choose from, but here are a few: (Only mentioning players who have graduated)

John Landers (1996-2000) - Mr. Landers was part of the first Spartan Mahoning tournament championship team back in 2000. More noteworthy today though is his support for the team as a member of the Boardman school board since 2010. He frequently attends Mahoning League events and also captains our annual Faculty vs. Varsity scrimmage. It's always nice to have a former quiz bowler on the school board as an advocate!

Mike Disotell (2006?-2007) - Mike apparently only played for one year, (can't find any other stats for previous years) but as one of only two Spartans to be Mahoning County Player of the Year, I felt he deserved a spot. Under the leadership of coach Jeff Boyll, the 2007 team won the Mahoning title as well as WYTV's Academic Challenge. They were also registered for HSNCT at one point, but did not attend. I'm sure Mr. Bossick can say more about this era, but judging from stats and hardware, this was a great team.

Mario Leone (2007-2010) - Captain of the 2009 championship team and the 2010 runner-ups to Jarret Greene's South Range, Mario had another short, but sweet career. Both of those teams were incredibly balanced, with Mario leading the way particularly in geography and history. Interestingly enough, Mario was the first of three Boardman captains who were top three finishers at the state National Geographic Bee in middle school, the others being myself and...

Michael Palagano (2011-2015) - Michael was (to my knowledge) the first ever Spartan to play a varsity game as a freshman, with strong knowledge in geography and history. He started Varsity as a sophomore, and along with teammates Luke Carabbia and Tristan Myers would go on to lead strong teams the next three years. Mike's senior year and coach Randy Nord's second year culminated in a league championship, ending three years of dominance by South Range. 2014-15 also marked the beginning of Boardman's quiz bowl renaissance, as the team became much more active outside the league going to South Range, Battle of the Burgh, and Boardman's first ever trip to HSNCT. We finished 3-7, but as a freshman I was extremely glad to have learned the basics of quiz bowl from the seniors on the team and have the opportunity to go to Chicago. Mike was also instrumental in starting Youngstown State's program and still remains active in quiz bowl.

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Pranav Padmanabhan
Boardman 2018
Youngstown State 2018
Ohio State 2022

Agreed with Bob. Gotta have Tom Moore on Fisher's Mt. Rushmore. Way more contributions to the HS game than Christine (no offense to her).

I'm a believer that college accomplishments should not be considered (nor should college jeopardy).

I don't believe Cooperstown considers stats from other leagues or levels when determining candidacy. Only high school stats should matter in determining our criteria, imho.

Regarding Tippecanoe, we've been awarding season MVP honors since 1999. Going back and looking at who won multiple times, Zach Witeof easily tops the list. Zach was the dominant player of his year(s) in quiz bowl, especially from 2003-05. Next on the list would be Laurel Spangler. Laurel carried the team her senior year at History Bowl, and was a one-woman tour de force topping individual leaderboards at many events in 2015-16. Third would be Ryan Haas, who was able to accomplish what the others could not - an NAQT state title. However, Ryan was helped significantly by great teammates that carried him in areas like science and math (he knew next to nothing in those areas). Fourth is a tough call, but probably I'd give the nod to Catie Haas. She was prohibited from playing while Ryan was on the team (by Ryan's demands) and she emerged as a force after a bit of a slow start. Honorable mention for the "backside" of the mountain would be Kase Vyas, Josh Brown, Joe Gauthier, Hannah Walker, Emily Ash, Eric Tollefson, Mike Dever, Joe Linsenmeyer, Ryan Posey, Elizabeth McCrillis and Aaron Peacock. In the future, Michael Vestey might knock off Catie or Ryan, but with the current competitive nature of Ohio quiz bowl, I'm not sure there's much chance Tipp will earn another state title. But stranger things have happened. Michael's only a sophomore, so if he can keep pace with John-John or Hari, who knows where he'll finish?

Re:Northmont - How can you leave out Emily Bingham?

Another program that might deserve its own Mt. Rushmore is Sidney. Also, Olmsted could put up a pretty good foursome.

Well, I'm still a bit new around here, but I'll add what I can to the Solon side of the discussion, and Bob Weiser can obviously chime in with far greater perspective.

Noah Rahman - seems the obvious starting point. Noah was part of two top ten finishes at HSNCT - T8/64 in '04 and 4/96 in '05 - and was the #2 scorer at both of those tournaments. His team also won the inaugural NAQT State title, as well as an Indiana State title! (Bob has told me that story, but I forget most of it. I think Noah was simply dying to go out and play NAQT). The other thing that Bob has told me is that from a leadership standpoint, Noah transformed the program. Not only was he an excellent player, but he wanted to improve and wanted the program to become a force, through things like running tournaments and going to camp.

Rohin Devanathan - It's pretty easy to learn how to be a quizbowl coach when you have Rohin Devanathan and John Xiang as juniors ready to explode. Rohin has more than double the next closest Solon player in terms of both NAQT points and powers. Over 21000 points and over 1000 powers for NAQT - those marks will stand for awhile at our school. Rohin was also very coachable, and it seemed like whenever I mentioned an area to the team that I thought we should improve in, a month or two later it was Rohin who had taken up that burden. Rohin also competed on two state championship teams in one day last April. He completed two events at OSU for Science Olympiad, then rushed over to join NAQT states mid 2nd round, and solo-ed our way back into the tournament after a first round bus-crash forfeit. In fact, we invented a game late last year called "Bus Crash." Rohin would spot the rest of the room x number of questions on a packet, and then try to come back and win solo. Sadistically, I made him spot them 12 questions one time, and he nearly tied it. Every other time, he came back and won.

John Xiang - That next closest Solon player after Rohin in NAQT stats? John Xiang. John was a deadly lit. player, and could also score reams of points on his own. (http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/3357/stats/varsity_all_games/individuals/ #1 scorer at a tournament in California that he played solo while at UC Berkeley on a college visit!) John's definitely the most analytical-minded player I've seen so far, and he and Rohin made quite the imposing pair, not to mention making each other better. (I know we're not considering college accomplishments, but the two of them just won a DII ICT championship - I just want to give them props for it here!) John really introduced me to the kind of kid that eats, sleeps, breathes quizbowl, and really pushed me to try to get up to speed my first couple of years. The two of them together won OAC and NAQT championships, a top ten HSNCT finish, and two top 16 NSC finishes.

For the last spot, it would probably be someone I wasn't around for. Ajay Pillai must have done a lot with OAC, because he doesn't seem to have accrued too many NAQT stats.

Jasper Lee seems the best choice. Top-20 HSNCT finish and OAC championship both in 2010. Nishanth Uli, who is slightly ahead of Jasper in scoring and powers, seems to have exploded the year after Jasper, but Jasper seems to have anchored them on a better overall team the year before.


It's fun to think about this, but even more exciting to think about how the current crop of kids across the state is going to continue to make their marks!

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Peter Bergman
Academic Challenge Coach
English Teacher
Solon High School

I largely concur with Tom, but am going to add a couple because FC has a great history

First,
Tom Moore
A very good player all around, unfortunately (according to Michael Sedlack) he never learned American lit. Despite having Brandon Shull on his team for three years, Tom is still the second highest scoring all time Fisher Catholic student at NAQT (hopefully HSNCT this year bumps me over but we'll see)

Andrew Smith
The best science player Fisher's ever had. He also was very dangerous to play against in myth, ancient history, and American literature

Michael Sedlack
I think he did decently when he played but mainly because the team wouldn't be where it is today without him

Jacob Snider
From what I hear he operated mainly on real knowledge, and did well

Chase Turner
I think the entire '06 Fisher team deserves this honor

Kyle Rainier
Another '06er

Jill Guinan
Another '06er

Lynn Stevenson (because I think it would be funny to see her face on a mountain, also because she kind of started the team)

Honorable mentions to:
The rest of the '04 team (including my brother)
Austin Reid
Brock Conrad (we fight a lot and I've absorbed a lot of his category, but he's pretty good all around)
Madellyn Kennedy
The rest of the '07 team
The rest of the '14 team
The '17 team
(I'll add more as I think of them)
Probably spelled most of these wrong but oh well.

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Hunter Wotruba
Fisher Catholic 2013-2017
Miami University 2017-2021

That '06 FC team with Steven, Kyle, Jill and company was one of my favorite teams to read for and coach against. They worked so well together and they were always such great competitors.

_________________
Bob Kilner
Chief Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008)
Coach, North High School (2015-)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10

I asked Sue and she says no to Mike Shott, Bill Cole, and Aaron (Barnett). She says she would add Abbaad Haider (05') and Edward Chang (00') to the list but it would be very difficult to pick four.

I think it is very hard to compare the different eras of quiz bowl. We are toying with the idea of creating a Copley Quiz Bowl Hall of Fame at school and I think it needs to be divided into Pre-Modern and Modern Eras. I guess I would say the beginning of the modern era would be when NAQT came onto the scene.

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Joshua Eck
Coach, Copley High School
OAC Executive Committee NE Region
Website: https://sites.google.com/copley-fairlaw ... zbowl/home

I totally agree with this. The state runner-up team members I played with as a younger player would have gotten destroyed by some of the kids I got to coach a decade later. Joe Galea and I had a conversation about this a few years ago when he went back for an alumni event at DCC. Sure, his team had won nationals in 2002 I believe, but the current DCC teams of the past 5-10 years would have beaten that team by 300+ points.

Comparing across eras is exceptionally hard to do. If you're going to do something like this, it has to basically be on their accomplishments alone and not compared to anyone else's.

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Bob Kilner
Chief Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008)
Coach, North High School (2015-)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10

Northmont's Mount Rushmore has three easy choices, and then the fourth spot is up in the air.

Obvious Choices
Sam Blizzard: The greatest Ohio player since 2010 and maybe ever (obviously I'm not familiar with the scene pre-2005). Three straight state titles in both OAC and NAQT and two History Bowl national championships, Sam didn't lose an OAC game from his sophomore year until graduation (179-0). His help during those years was spotty, which led to his teams never finishing higher than 7th at PACE/NAQT, but he was a dominant force that didn't need much coaching or drive. His back to back wins over LASA A and Arcadia at NAQT 2014 (a year they finished 1-2) was impressive, despite us taking a tough loss in the playoffs. Sam was a member of the NASAT team for all four years of high school, always playing well for Team Ohio.

Kara Combs: What Sam had in natural ability, Kara has in dedication and drive to improve. Kara does not come close to the natural skills that Sam had with the buzzer, but made up for that a drive to do better. Kara spent two years learning from Sam, and then took a more dominant role her junior and senior year, easily moving up the board to be our second highest scoring player in history. I don't think Kara gets enough credit for her ability in today's male-dominated game (one primary reason that she didn't want to try out for this year's NASAT team despite being a two-time member of Team Ohio). In addition to her skill at the buzzer, Kara's contribution into the future is the development of our middle school team, including the emergence of Samantha Street and Sean Scranton. Kara has coached the middle schoolers this year to an impressive season, and continues to work with them to help them be ready to step in to the varsity line up next year. Kara will join our staff as our first ever full time Middle School coach in 2017-2018.

Brandon Williams: Our first dominant player, Brandon was the best player on a team of four great players (with Michael Czupryn, Dan Welch and Emily Bingham). A four year contributor, Brandon was on the team that took an 800 point beating from State College at PACE Nationals as a sophomore, and then used that as motivation to win a state title as a junior. Brandon and his team competed against the great Copley and Olmsted teams led by Saajid and Jim, which meant he only won one state title, but he was a highly motivated player who was our first "star".

The fourth spot is rough - I strongly considered Emily Bingham (who had a stellar senior year and has of course gone on to be a tremendous player in college, Jeopardy contest, and asset to our team). However, Emily joined us during her junior year and was only true a 1 1/2 year starter (though a very good one). I also strongly considered Joe Czupryn, who was our first true captain and helped with the establishment of our program (as well as his many accomplishments at Sidney and as director of the OAC). However, I ended up with:

Michael Czupryn: While rarely the top scorer on the team (since he played with his brother as a freshman and with Brandon in other years), Michael was the rock and calming influence on a team with a lot of volatile personalities. Michael was a four year starter and state champion who has continued to write questions, teach at ACE and contribute to quiz bowl on the OAC committee long after his playing days have ended.

Honorable Mentions: Emily Bingham, Joe Czupryn, Dan Welch, Tori Amos, Brendon Jenkins, Anna Henry, Rachel Tracy

Back in my day (the late 90s before tossup bonus was much of a thing), Northmont was dominated by Joel Helton, who led Northmont to a couple of state appearances. The team I captained was good locally (winning our regional TV show High-Q twice), but could never get by St. X, Tipp, and Oakwood at the regional level. Things have changed a lot since then....

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David Jones
Coach, Northmont High School

Does anyone know who Beavercreek's best quiz bowl players were from back in the early 2000's? Our old coach retired so I have no way of finding out.

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Hari Parameswaran
Beavercreek High School 2019

paging Bob Kilner, Alex Connor, and noted Beavercreek alum Jonathan Graham

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Thomas Moore
Ohio Wesleyan '18

Retired from online, for good.

I don't know if Jonathan frequents this board, but the two guys Beavercreek had on their 2000 and 2001 state championship teams my junior and senior years were fantastic. The girl that was the captain of Jonathan's 2003 senior team was also very very good.

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Bob Kilner
Chief Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008)
Coach, North High School (2015-)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10

Hari, I'm not sure if it's still there since I haven't been inside of BHS in 13 years except for one event, but there at least used to be a plaque in the commons area with the rosters of the various state championship winning teams. IIRC, there were lots of blank spaces left for future teams since the plaque was made in 2001 just a few weeks before the announcement that the program would be cut once the existing members graduated. I hope that your name will be continued to be engraved in it many times in the next few years. Congratulations on your national and state championships. Another piece of team history that I'm not sure if you've ever noticed was that when they put in bricks around the flagpole near the (new/current) main entrance soon after the school had been rebuilt, that there are a group of bricks with the names of the members of all the people who were on the team at some point in 2001.

The people who Bob is referring to are named Steve Fiore and Karolyn Upham. I don't think that Karolyn would belong there only for the sake that our team was really balanced and that if we had played more TU/B, it would show that the three of us who were really great on the 2003 team would have fairly equal statlines. If Bob Xu, Karolyn, and I were one person, we would definitely belong there, but we're not. I would definitely put Steve on the Mount Rushmore, and given what I've heard second and thirdhand about this Hari du/de (do people at BHS still say dude in Leibniz notation?), he probably belongs there, too. According to Mike Bindis, the 1990 state championship team was dominated by a guy named Ben Gum. The 1994 state championship team was apparently really deep and fairly balanced, but there was one guy on the team named Daniel Schepler who had a reputation for never being beaten on a math or science tossup, and he made both the national math team and national physics team. There are lots of people who deserve honorable mentions, but I don't know many of their names. But I think that Ben, Daniel, Steve, and Hari would be make a fairly reasonable group for Beavercreek.

EDIT: Names that I've heard were pretty good in the past (note, it's been a long time since I've talked to anyone about this, so some names might be screwed up) were Brian Barker?/Brian Barkley? (whatever his name is, he was apparently Beavercreek's best player in the 80's), Phil Neal, Andrew Schepler, Kevin Miller, Sunna Babar, Joey DeLong, and the three I mentioned earlier who I thought didn't belong on the actual fictitious mountain.

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Jonathan Graham
Beavercreek(1999-2003), Ohio State (2003-07), Wright State(2012-fall14)
occasional question writer

AFAIK, during the time I was in high school, Miami Valley's team had so much turnover, so I don't have anything too enlightening to say about their team except that they usually were at one or two tournaments that we were at most years. They usually played a now-defunct OAC format tournament at Turpin High School that was considered to be the best written OAC format tournament at the time.

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Jonathan Graham
Beavercreek(1999-2003), Ohio State (2003-07), Wright State(2012-fall14)
occasional question writer

I've heard of this, before.

Turpin still makes the drive up to Copley for OAC. Ironically, Turpin going to Copley is probably the furthest any Hamilton County school has traveled for in-state quiz bowl since Joe Nutter was at Walnut Hills (graduated in 2011.)

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Thomas Moore
Ohio Wesleyan '18

Retired from online, for good.

The Roger Comstock Memorial Tournament was a great OAC tournament that the alumni (former players for deceased Turpin coach Roger Comstock) used to put together. I think it was the best OAC tournament in SW Ohio until it went defunct in about 2008.

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Ron Maupin
Head Coach - Little Miami High School

To jump on that bandwagon - we attended the Walter Comstock tournament in 2003 and lost in the semifinals to Jonathan's Beavercreek team. I'm pretty sure they then played Alex's St. Charles team in the finals. I'd have to dig back through the old Yahoo! group to find out the full results of that.

But yeah, when Mr. Comstock died, Justin Held and Christine Muller took over the tournament - Justin was a 2000 or 1999 grad I believe, Christine was right around the same time. I'm pretty sure Justin is a now a doctor. He was a great guy. That group and the group just after them ran a fantastic event. The questions were great, the moderators were great and the competition was great. I remember thinking that it was cool to get out to see teams we had never really seen before for the most part. This was only the 2nd time I met Jonathan and the first time I ever met Joe Bellas.

Steve Fiore was a beast on the buzzer. I remember our varsity in 2000-01 only lost something like 4 matches the entire year prior to regionals and two were to Beavercreek. Our captain was one of the best players in the state and fastest guys I've ever seen on the buzzer and Steve had him so flustered by winning every buzzer race, that he pretty much shut down.

And what Jonathan said about Ben Gum was right. I don't know much other than Mike told me he was a state math champion and they swept the math category from GHHS in the state final in 1990 and ended up winning by less than 7 (at the time when the points were 3-2 instead of 2-1) and with no alphabet round.

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Bob Kilner
Chief Admin, ohioqbforum.com
Former Coach, Garfield Heights HS (2001-2008)
Coach, North High School (2015-)
Kent State '06 / Boise State '10

Walt Comstock was quite the guy. I'd been going to Turpin for a couple of years when Walt pulled me aside and told me he had terminal cancer, and asked if I could help shepherd his replacement, Carmen Venditto. I happily agreed, and Carmen coached Turpin for maybe a couple of years (that was back when Justin and Christine were both still playing, I think). Once Carmen stepped away from coaching, Justin kept the WCMAT going for awhile but since he lacked the contacts inside Turpin the event didn't get a lot of support from the students or administration. So it went away.

I know Turpin still plays some city-league stuff and occasionally makes forays to Copley, but either the coach/players or both are anti-tossup bonus. I talked Carmen into coming to the TAC once, but even when they were active they might only do NACT and St. Charles in a good year.

Comstock was a real character, though. Great teacher, beloved by his students and quiz teamers, and very well-organized. I picked up several ideas on how to run an event from Walt, as well as from Sue Korosa and Lynn Stevenson, of course.

I'm old enough to have played that tournament while Walt was still alive, although I did also play in the first three WCMATs. I agree with the above sentiments about the people at Turpin and the quality of the tournament. It's unfortunate that the biggest memory I have from that tournament was losing in some preliminary round of the tournament to Copley in January 2002, which was Beavercreek's first loss in a non-Panasonic format round since May 2000, and then falling asleep during our semifinal rematch before getting third place in that tournament. Bob, you shouldn't feel bad about losing to Steve in 2000-01. He always beat us in practice, and no one else beat him in the 2000-01 school year.

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Jonathan Graham
Beavercreek(1999-2003), Ohio State (2003-07), Wright State(2012-fall14)
occasional question writer

Reading this thread was pretty fun. I'd probably agree with Mr. Bergman's list of the top Solon players - Ajay Pillai wasn't from my time so I can't say how good he was. I also placed in the top half of the PACE NSC field (like 30/64?) playing solo my senior year, if that's worth consideration. In Nishanth's defense though, I led a team that was overall better than when he was captain, which led to that top 20 HSNCT finish that he couldn't quite replicate the following year.

Some other people who do deserve consideration though: Rohan Achar, David Kramer, Dima Chernyak, Manraj Grewal

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Jasper Lee
University of Tennessee
Ohio State University '14
Solon High School '10