David Reinstein

David Reinstein was a coach at New Trier from 1994-2011. He has been the Chair of IHSSBCA since 2005.

Question Writing & Editing

David is the head writer and editor of the Scobol Solo and Masonic sets each year. He has been in charge of Scobol Solo since it started in 2001, and he took over the Masonic set for the 2012 tournament. He has gotten an increasing amount of help with the Solo set over the years, especially editing help from Jonah Greenthal. With the Masonic set, he has gotten significant writing help from Donald Taylor and editing advice from Jonah and Tom Egan. David is also a significant contributor to CMST and, since late 2011, NAQT. He also has contributed to the IHSA set, as a social studies editor in 2012 and then as a math and general assistant editor in 2013. Because the writers flaked out, he ended up writing half the social studies in 2012. David no longer has any association with the IHSA.

Illinois Scholastic Bowl & Quizbowl

David has played a major role in IHSSBCA since the organization was about one year old. He first gained attention by starting a petition asking IHSA to improve question quality. Coaches from over forty schools signed the petition, and the result was that New Trier got a bunch of angry phone calls from IHSA. Many years later, however, IHSA did improve its question quality somewhat when it switched from Answers Plus to a secret cabal that Reinstein now belongs to, though there are still serious issues with their questions. The Masonic Tournament used improved questions written in part by some of David's former students at Aegis Questions for 2008 and 2009, then regressed to Questions Galore for 2010 and 2011, then used David starting in 2012.

David has a long history of managing Turnabouts and writing letters and articles for IHSSBCA. He succeeded David Riley as Chair several years ago, and the organization has continued to grow under his leadership. Some of the programs that came into being since Reinstein took over are the Awards Dinner, Hall of Fame, ethics guidelines, moderator certification, the annualization of SchoBowlFest, Novice Tournaments, and a Members Only section of their website. The organization now sponsors a team that attends NASAT.

Coaching

Reinstein coached consistently strong teams for many years at New Trier that placed highly at many local tournaments and had decent showings at Nationals. His teams won nine IHSA Sectionals, one each IHSA and NAQT State Championship, and many Central Suburban League titles.

Reinstein took over as coach when he started teaching at New Trier. He had planned on coaching Math Team, but that team already had many coaches, so he filled a need in Scholastic Bowl. He was told that he could have the position if he was willing to drive a van, since the other coach that year did not have a license. Since then, David has worked with several coaches. After becoming a father in 1998, David dropped from attending all team matches to about half of them. In 2011, he stepped down from coaching, though he still teaches at New Trier.

Until its 2009 cancellation, Reinstein was an annual guest on the Kathy and Judy Show on Chicago's WGN radio during the week of the IHSA State Championship. Most of the time was spent asking sample questions to the hosts of the show, with somewhat humorous outcomes. It was annually the biggest publicity moment in Illinois Scholastic Bowl. (listen to the 2009 appearance)

Tournament Hosting

In addition to an occasional IHSA or Masonic Regional or Sectional tournament, Reinstein has run the Scobol Solo each year since 2001. He writes the questions and rules and draws up the pairings, which involve roughly 400 matches each year put together using a power-matching format. He gets some help from Jonah Greenthal, who designed software that pretty much runs the tournament.

From 2005 to 2007, the New Trier Varsity was hosted by Carlo Angiuli and Nick Matchen, who graduated from New Trier in 2007; duties were taken over by Jonah Greenthal beginning in 2008, but David has always played a major role in running the tournament.

Personal

David graduated from Niles North in Skokie, Illinois in 1986 and from Brown in 1990. David and his wife have two daughters and a son.