The 2013 NSC was held at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD on June 8 and 9. Ladue Horton Watkins (Jialin Ding, Max Schindler, Haohang Xu, Ben Zhang) defeated Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy (Roger Cain, Arthur Lee, Allan Sadun, Nathan Weiser) 460-360 in a one-game final to win their first national championship. Loyola Academy went 5-3 in the super-playoffs to finish third. Dorman beat Detroit Catholic Central 180-150 in a tiebreaker for fourth place after both teams finished 4-4, LASA B (3-5) was sixth place, and Thomas Jefferson (7th) won tiebreakers over Montgomery Blair (8th) and Maggie Walker (9th) after all three teams finished 2-6.
Individuals
Max Schindler of Ladue was the tournament’s top scorer, at 169 PPG in the preliminary rounds. Max became the second player in NSC history to lead the tournament in scoring and lead his team to the championship, after Jacob Mikanowski of 2000 State College. The remaining top scorers were Dylan Minarik (Belvidere North), Siddhant Dogra (DCD), “Carson Davis” (“Robert E. Lee”), and Raynor Kuang (Thomas Jefferson), each at more than 100 PPG. They were joined the All-Star game by superplayoff team representatives Roger Cain (LASA A), Morgan Venkus (Loyola), Madhav Kumar (Dorman), and Collin Parks (DCC). Raynor, Siddhant, Collin, and Roger teamed up to win the All-Star game.
Tournament Format
The tournament featured 72 teams, the highest total to date in PACE history, starting in 9 groups of 8. The top two teams in each group advanced to the top tier playoffs, where they played in 3 groups of 6. Group A saw Ladue, Montgomery Blair and Maggie Walker all advance at 4-1. LASA A was the only team to remain unbeaten through the playoffs, leading Group B, where LASA B and Thomas Jefferson also advanced. In Group C, Dorman and Loyola advanced, while DCC fought off Cistercian in a tiebreaker for the final spot in the top nine. In the crossover rounds, both LASA A and Ladue defeated all comers up until the last round, when they faced each other. Needing a win to force a final, Ladue prevailed 470-360, leaving the teams even and setting up a rematch in the final, where Ladue again won to claim the title. Full statistics are available on the HSQB database (http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/1431/).
Tidbits
The Benjamin Cooper Award was presented to Chris Chiego of UC San Diego and Dwight Wynne of UC Irvine for furthering quiz bowl in California. The Young Ambassador Cooper Award was given to Max Schindler, the second straight year the winner of the award has gone on to win NSC the same year. This was the third time in NSC history that the final was a rematch of the final from NAQT HSNCT, and for the third time, the two teams involved split the titles; Thomas Jefferson lost to Dorman in the 2003 final and Maggie Walker in the 2004 final after having beaten those teams in their respective HSNCT finals. LASA B finished in 6th place, the highest performance for a school’s second team since Thomas Jefferson B made the semifinals in 2005.