Hinsdale Central

Hinsdale Central Red Devils
Location: Hinsdale, Illinois
Coaches	Alan McCloud
State Championships	1992 IHSA
Program Status	Unknown
School Size	Unknown
NAQT Page	link

Hinsdale Central High School is a public high school in Hinsdale, Illinois, near Chicago. It competes in Class AA, the "large school" division, of the Illinois High School Association's (IHSA) State Championship Series.

The team was coached by Donna Watkins throughout the 1990s and for a few additional years. Under her, the team won the 1992 IHSA State Championship and finished 2nd in 1998 and 2002. The team has never entered a large number of invitationals--most of its matches are played within the West Suburban Conference.

Current (2013-2014) Players

Sophomores (2016)

Sunny Chen

James Zhou

Andrew Coyner

Jack Mueller

Hugo Zoells

BJ Ryan

Ankush Bajaj

Juniors (2015)

Miguel Molina

History

While the school has had a string of conference, sectional, and regional titles since its state championship in 1992, Hinsdale Central has not played a major role in the Illinois Quizbowl scene in a while.

During the 2012-2013 school year, Hinsdale Central Varsity had many of its juniors on Varsity from the previous year return, boding for a strong conference season with many experienced players. Meanwhile, it recruited and retained for most of the year almost a dozen freshmen--all of them guys. These freshmen, along with about 3 or 4 sophomores who stayed on JV as captains, were very bright and covered a broad range of subjects.

On Varsity, the starting 4 seniors were Sagar Dommaraju, Max Rong, Gideon Ticho and Alex Newkirk, with senior Nina Tandle and sophomore Miguel Molina backing them up. They ended up breezing through West Suburban Conference play, going 11-1 with a close 290-270 loss to only OPRF in December, their 8th game. They ended the season as the outright conference champion, forgoing the conference tournament due to both scheduling and weather problems.

On JV, there were many freshmen vying for playing time. The players who remained for the entire year were Rohith Balusu, Jack Mueller, Sunny Chen, Ankush Bajaj, Andrew Coyner, James Zhou, BJ Ryan, Hugo Zoells, and Ben Anderson. Being all boys, this team was very immature and rowdy, often getting in trouble and making messes, though they were much more talented than their conference rivals. They coasted to a 12-0 undefeated record in conference play, almost always with very wide margins of victory. The JV team was the first West Suburban Conference team to go undefeated for almost a decade. Throughout the season, the JV players that were believed to show the most promise and given the most recognition were Ankush Bajaj and Sunny Chen, who played a few games for Varsity against easier conference rivals. Sunny was superior to all other freshmen, and ended up helping Varsity later in the season.

During the season, the Hinsdale Central teams went to only one tournament, Loyburn, hosted by Rockford Auburn and Loyola Academy on December 15, 2012, entering an A and a B team. The A team roster was normal, though JV was missing its sophomore captains and some freshmen. While conference play was easy, both teams struggled at this tournament, showing just how weak the West Suburban Conference and both Hinsdale teams were in comparison to some of the better teams in the state. Both teams went 1-4 in the morning round, though the A team was placed in the second (out of three) playoff bracket and the B team was placed in the third. In the playoffs, Hinsdale A went 5-2, and Hinsdale B went 4-3. The top Varsity player was Max Rong, who ended up in 24th place with 37.73 ppg over 11 games, while the top JV players were Sunny Chen, 32nd with 31.43 ppg over 7 games, and Andrew Coyner, 37th with 26.67 ppg. Andrew's limited playing time was due to an argument between him and Sunny, which he protested by sitting out. The A team finished 6-5 for the day, while the B team finished 4-7.

IHSA State Champion
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
Centralia	1992	Quincy