Moses Kitakule

Moses Kitakule
Noted subjects	Literature, Christianity, Africa, soccer
Current college	Yale (2015-)
Past colleges	none
High school	Episcopal School of Acadiana (2011-2015)
Middle school	Episcopal School of Acadiana (2009-2011)
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Career

Moses, one of the few active black players in the collegiate quiz-bowl world, currently plays for Yale University. He is currently working with Harvard player Jon Suh on JaMES, a tossups-only side event of Bible questions.

ESA

Moses started his career playing LAAC, a format of bad quizbowl. He led ESA B in scoring in his first foray into pyramidal quiz-bowl, the 2011 Righteous Justice tournament. This was followed by a drought of nearly three years, before two more tournaments during his senior year. On ESA A, he generally functioned as a second scorer to generalist Sam Hebert, but outscored him in prelims at his final NAQT high school tournament, the 2015 Louisiana State Championship.

Yale

2015-17

Moses was shocked to discover just how relatively behind Louisiana quiz-bowlers was when he joined Yale quiz-bowl; nevertheless, he resolved to get better. He was aided by Jacob Reed's helpful tips and resources and by an introduction to the Mnemosyne flash-carding program by Adam S. Fine, who had used this method to become a "master of organic chemistry." Moses replaced Connor Wood on the Yale DII team when the latter quit, and after a surprisingly decent performance at SCT, was designated as the team's literature player. Unfortunately, the team gave a disappointing sixth-place performance at 2016 ICT, but Moses once again surprised by finishing as second scorer. During his sophomore year he was once again on Yale B, this time with Laurence Li, James Wedgwood, and Anand Nanduri, but the four never actually played a tournament together as a full team.

2017-18

For a third time, Moses found himself on Yale B. Moses has repeatedly stated that this team, of all the teams he has played with, was his favourite. Fine arts/philosophy/literature player James Wedgwood, classics/A.E. Housman player Michael Kearney, and science/literature player Hasna Karim made up the rest of the team. Despite the shadowing effect caused by three additional literature players, Moses managed to emerge as the consistent top scorer on a team for the first time (mainly by vulching as much as he could). At 2018 ACF Regionals, Yale B failed to qualify via A-Value but managed to pull off one of the greatest upsets of all time, defeating an essentially full-strength Columbia A. Due to outside circumstances, Moses (and subsequently Yale B) underperformed significantly at 2018 ICT. Yale B was denied one last hurrah at ACF Nationals because Isaac Kirk-Davidoff unexpectedly dropped, forcing Moses up to the A-team at very short notice. He was unable to adequately fill the gap left by IKD so the favourites finished in a disappointing 3rd place.

2018-19

In his final year, Moses was promoted to the A-team full-time, making it the first time since 11th grade that he was operating as a fourth-scorer. He got the year off to a good start, contributing a solid 20 PPG while legends Jacob Reed and Stephen Eltinge broke the Hoppes-Mikanowski limit on the way to an emphatic victory at Penn Bowl.

Best Tournament Performances

• 2018 Penn Bowl - 1st place (with Jacob Reed and Stephen Eltinge)
• 2018 ACF Nationals - 3rd place (with Jacob Reed, Stephen Eltinge, Isaac Kirk-Davidoff, and Adam S. Fine)
• 2018 SMT - 2nd place (with Adam S. Fine)
• 2017 It's Lit (Skype) - 1st place (with Clare Keenan and Gabe Guedes)
• 2017 Cambridge Open - 1st place (with Jacob Reed, Stephen Eltinge, and Jerry Vinokurov)
• 2016 SCT - 1st place (with Adam S. Fine, Cathy Xue, and Olivia Noble)