Triple Win at Princeton University

On November 21, the Academic Team competed at the Central Jersey History Bee & Bowl at Princeton University, in a series of exciting Championship matches. The team ‘Bowl’ History Championship match paired up two undefeated teams with 7 & 0 records, High Tech vs. East Brunswick. The moderator stated these two same teams were in the finals in the last 4 years. It started as an even match: after the first quarter, the score was tied, 50 to 50; after the second quarter and a late score by High Tech, High Tech trailed 120 to 110. But in the third quarter, High Tech jumped ahead 210 to 180, and finished the final quarter in the lead by a score of 340 to 230, to capture the Varsity Bowl Championship Plaque.

In the individual Varsity ‘Bee’ competition, Samuel Kao and Andrew Huang tied for the most points in the qualifying rounds and both advanced to the Championship round where the top 3 compete to achieve 6 points first. Samuel Kao took first place and the ‘Gold Medal.’ Andrew initially tied for second place but lost on the sudden death tiebreaker to take the ‘Bronze Medal.’

In the individual Junior Varsity ‘Bee’ competition for freshman and sophomores, Eric Zheng, Nelson Lin and Douglas Simons advanced to the Semi-finals. However, only Douglas Simons advanced to the Championship round where he had to compete against the 2015 National JV Bee Champion [April 2015 in Washington DC], Alex Schmidt of Lehigh Valley Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The first player to reached 6 points wins. Douglas trailed badly at the start, 1 to 4. However, Douglas then rapidly scored 3 consecutive points. Alex must have been a bit unnerved, since he got up from his chair and shook Douglas’ hand in defeat. But the audience shouted the scored was only tied 4 to 4 and Alex returned to his seat. Alex took the next point, now leading Douglas 5 to 4. However, Douglas scored the next point to tying it, 5 to 5. We all held our breath for the deciding question. Douglas scored the final point and won the ‘Gold Medal’! This match is most probably a preview of the 2016 National JV Bee Championship Finals in Washington, DC in April.

In the team JV ‘Bowl’ competition, the High Tech freshman team advanced to the semi-finals to faced Alex Schmidt, who played single-handedly against a team of 4 students. Unfortunately, the High Tech JV team played without Douglas who was placed on the Varsity Team. Alex was undefeated to eventually take the JV Bowl Championship plaque. Our High Tech JV team showed great promise.

Below is a photo of the High Tech Varsity Bowl Team [taken by Austin Huang] with the Championship plaque and their Gold and Bronze medals.

A Team
Andrew Huang
Ray Zeng
Samuel Kao
Douglas Simons

B Team
Nikhil Lakhil
Sean Kearns
Gaurav Sharma
Adrian Thamburaj

C Team:
Matthew Hawkins
Karl Roush
Yihan [Wendy] Wu
Kevin Lu

D Team (JV team):
Eric Zheng
Nelson Lin
Daniel Du
Michael Li