Hinsdale Central

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Location: Hinsdale, Illinois
Coaches	Alan McCloud
State championships	1992 IHSA
National championships	none
Nationals appearances	unknown
Program status	active

Hinsdale Central High School is a District 86 public high school in Hinsdale, Illinois, near Chicago. It competes in the West Suburban Conference and Class AA, the large school division, of the Illinois High School Association's (IHSA) State Championship Series.

Elementary districts that feed into the school include: MSD60 (Westview Hills Middle School), GSD62 (Gower Middle School), D181 (Hinsdale Middle School and Clarendon Hills Middle School), BSD53 (Butler Jr. High), as well as Catholic and private schools, notably St. Isaac Jogues and Avery Coonley. Of those schools, only Westview Hills, St. Isaac Jogues, and Gower have the quiz bowl programs of any sort, with the first two being the largest teams, though there are surprisingly no current high school players from either school.

Team Members

2017	2016	2015	2014
Atharv Garje	Andrew Coyner	JD Randell	--
Ayan Agarwal	Sunny Chen
Harrison Wang	Jack Mueller
Michael Noonan	Hugo Zoells
Peyton Pielet	BJ Ryan
'	Ankush Bajaj
	James Zhou
	Steven Botsoe
	Anika Arvanitis
	Ian Sokolowski
	Jack Mason
	Tony Yang

History

Early Years

The team was coached by Donna Watkins throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s. Under her, the team won the 1992 IHSA State Championship Tournament and finished 2nd in 1998 and 2002, racking up a succession of conference, regional, and sectional titles in the process. Upon her retirement, Alisha McCloud and then Eric Jensen coached in succession, followed by Alan McCloud taking over as the new (and current) head coach.

The team usually found itself near the top of the conference, and advanced to IHSA State numerous times due to being in an easy Sectional (which it is not in anymore), though it was never really competitive or important in the Illinois quiz bowl scene.

2013-2014

Starting in the 2013-2014 school year, with the graduation of its entire 2012-13 Varsity team (with the exception of a junior who quit in December), Hinsdale Central was left with a large leadership vacuum, due to extremely weak retention of '14 and '15 players. In addition, that year's freshman recruiting class was also weak, as only 5 freshmen were left by the end of the season; surprisingly, the team gained just as many new sophomores as freshmen, making the class of 2016 arguably the most successful recruiting class in Hinsdale Central history. The sophomores proved to be highly motivated, surpassing the previous team in all aspects and bringing the program to new heights. As the season went on, the team made great strides, placing well at tournaments, many of which were attended unaffiliated.

As expected, the team maintained recent dominance within the West Suburban Conference, going undefeated for 15 games. The team won the semifinal and final matches even with top scorer Sunny Chen absent.

Seeded second in its Sectional, the team won its Regional with ease.

Individual Awards

IHSSBCA All-Sectional

• Sunny Chen (2014)

• James Zhou (2014)

IHSA State Champion
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
Centralia	1992	Quincy