Ankush Bajaj

Ankush Bajaj
Noted subjects	Literature, Biology, Chemistry, Social Sciences
High school	Hinsdale Central
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Ankush Bajaj is a junior and the lead scorer on the A team for Hinsdale Central High School.

2012-2013

Ankush immediately joined Scholastic Bowl and made a very strong impression on everyone; freshmen, seniors, and coaches alike; through engaging in capital city contests with B.J. Ryan and lecturing the freshmen on the biology topics that they had yet to cover in class. When the season finally began, Ankush opened with a bang, getting around 5 tossups over the first two matches against Leyden's and Downers Grove South's Junior Varsity teams. He immediately created buzz among the sophomore JV captains, who considered him and Sunny Chen (who had 8 tossups that day) as the definite superstars. Over the season, Ankush continued to experience success, enough so that he and Sunny Chen were moved up to Varsity for one meet, and they contributed in the wins against York and Willowbrook. As Hinsdale was rather inactive outside of the West Suburban Conference, the team only went to one tournament the whole year, Loyburn. At the tournament, the B team was composed of 7 freshmen, as the sophomore captains had mostly quit by then. During one very close match against Maine South B, Mr. McCloud told the team during a timeout to "go for the win" as opposed to balancing playing time, so it was arbitrarily decided that the winning formation, the "Big Three," would be Sunny, Ankush, and James Zhou. Going into the last question tied at 190, Sunny managed to get the last tossup, on painting, and the team ended up 30ing the bonus, probably its only 30 the entire tourney, and it ended up being Hinsdale Central B's only win in the morning. The team finished the day 4-7, though one loss against Stevenson B must have been lost. Ankush ended with 12.14 ppg that day, and was very sad that computational math was not as popular outside of IHSA.

2013-2014

Ankush is undoubtedly one of the more committed members of the Hinsdale Central quiz bowl team, and after James did surprisingly well at Earlybird, his cockiness started to annoy and discourage Ankush. As a response to Sunny's ranting, Ankush was reluctantly pushed into the spot of literature specialist, though he still frequently dominates Sunny in biology and chemistry. In addition, he powers Mahabharatha 4 out of 5 times, and averages 27 ppb on Hinduism bonuses. Also, Ankush's development as a literature player really strengthened the team, and marked the beginning of Hinsdale Central's emergence out of mediocrity.

2014-2015

Following a disappointing personal performance at the 2014 HSNCT, Ankush decided to step up the studying over the summer and try to lock down all literature, biology, and chemistry. With the expectation that Ankush will carry the team, the rest of Hinsdale Central A had decided to temporarily stop studying. His progression from a decent literature and science specialist to an elite generalist allowed him to lead Hinsdale to placing second in the state at the 2015 NAQT Illinois State Championship.