WUHSAC

WUHSAC, or the Washington University High School Academic Competition, is Washington University's annual high school quiz bowl competition that generally takes place in January or February. Since 2022, the tournament has been a mirror of the DART set; from 2013 to 2021, it used Yale's housewritten BHSAT questions. In previous years, questions were written by the WUSTL team. Teams participating can qualify for the PACE NSC.

Characteristics

WUHSAC is one of the flagship tournaments of the Missouri high school quiz bowl circuit, usually drawing around 30 teams. WUHSAC is also noteworthy as one of the few Missouri tournaments which draws a large number of out of state teams, recently from places like Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Florida.

WUHSAC also used the Gordon Arsenoff's WUStL Updates Statistics Live! (WUStL!) online scorekeeping system, which was used for other WUSTL tournaments from the 2012 WUHSAC to the 2019 WUHSAC.

Unusually, WUHSAC uses 20-point powers in a simulacrum of the NSC. All other aspects are the same as in standard quizbowl; there are 5-point negs and no bouncebacks on bonuses.

History

Prior to 2013, WUHSAC was intended to be a slightly harder than average house-written tournament, similar to Harvard's HFT. Beginning with the 2008 iteration, the set drew criticism from players such as Charlie Dees due to poor difficulty control, the use of biographical clues, and generally poor writing quality. This criticism eventually led to the adoption of Yale's Bulldog High School Academic Tournament set in 2013, which was well-received.

Recent tournament directors have included Sean Phillips and Charles Hang. Jacob O'Rourke has directed the tournament since WUHSAC XXI.

External Links

1999-2007 WUHSAC Results

Criticism of the 2008 iteration

2012 set discussion

Results

Year	Champion	Runner-up
1999	New Madrid County Central	Unknown
January 2000	Bartlett	Unknown
December 2000	Bartlett	Lafayette
2002	Detroit Catholic Central	Walton
2003	Detroit Catholic Central	St. Andrew's
2004	New Trier	Detroit Country Day
2005	Dunbar A	Dunbar B
2006	Dunbar	Madisonville North Hopkins
2007	North Kansas City	New Trier
2008	North Kansas City	Rockford Auburn
2009	Rockford Auburn	Carbondale
2010	Chatham Glenwood	Parkway Central
2011	Carbondale	Northmont
2012	Ladue A	Clayton A
2013	Ladue A	Detroit Catholic Central
2014	Ladue A	Northmont
2015	Hallsville A	Savannah
2016	Hannibal A	Woodford County
2017	MICDS	Ladue A
2018	Detroit Catholic Central	Ladue A
2019	Ladue A	St. Joseph Central A
2020	Ladue A	St. Joseph Central A
2021	Ladue A	Kinkaid
2022	Clayton A	College Heights Christian
2023	Fair Grove	Parkway West A
2024	Mexico	College Heights Christian