Post date: Jun 25, 2015 5:54:48 PM
A recap of HSNCT results, written by Jason Cheng of SoCal Quizbowl
La Jolla (7 – 3) (1-2 in playoffs, t-34th place) [Stats]
Vincent Doehr, James Malouf, Erica Liu, Charlie Mann, Thomas Garcia
The heartbreak of SoCal’s HSNCT run certainly belongs to the second-strongest SoCal team La Jolla–they had a difficult run in the prelims, playing 8 teams that made eventually made the playoffs, including a couple of 7-3 teams, two eventual 8-2 teams, and one eventual 9-1 team (Northmont). This was exacerbated by their relatively low playoffs seed in the Winner’s bracket, where they faced Western Albemarle, the #1 playoffs seed, almost right off the bat after beating Ezell-Harding. Interestingly enough, had they lost that game to Ezell-Harding, they would’ve played a slew of much easier games afterwards against teams that were far weaker than they were statistically, although there was no way of knowing that in advance due to the nature of the Swiss matching card system. Instead, they were knocked out in the local showdown third round of playoffs by their neighbor just up the I-5 (and onto the CA-56 a little), Torrey Pines A, who staved off a 7/6/3 onslaught through a significantly higher bonus conversion. Had La Jolla not fallen victim to bad luck of the draw and gotten over the hump, they could’ve matched Westview with a t-13 at the statistical tossup pace they were playing at.
Individually, all members of this team did quite well. Senior Erica Liu provided her lit+FA strength at a 12/18/3 clip, putting up a great tossup-neg rate and scoring a majority of La Jolla’s tossup point in their game against t-5th and #1 seed Western Albemarle in the playoffs with 0 negs. Senior Charlie Mann performed to his usual hyper-specialist abilities as well, although he was hurt by HSNCT’s greatly decreased Thought and Religion, Mythology, and Philosophy distribution–he still provided the team with 8 powers, 3 tossups, with only 3 negs over this weekend.
La Jolla’s two highest scorers, though, were junior Vincent Doehr and sophomore James Malouf, who both provided very good scoring stats–James Malouf in particular put up 16/21/7, while the star of the show, Vincent Doehr, put up an astonishing 38/34/23. Aside from the slightly higher neg rate, Vincent Doehr might come back next year to be the strongest returning player in Southern California high school quiz bowl, at least on NAQT. This might have been a demoralizing nationals run for La Jolla, and especially for grizzled veteran Erica Liu and her fellow senior Charlie Mann, but their two underclassmen look set to carry on their memories and bring La Jolla back around next year to greater heights.
Full results can be found here