One-person teams

A one-person team (or one-man team) is a team with multiple players on it whose fate is perceived to be entirely tied to the scoring abilities of a single player. Literal "one-person" teams are typically referred to as solo instead.

The term is both laudatory and derisive - while it celebrates the skill of the "one-person" in question, it minimizes the contributions of their teammates (which are often significant) and carries with it the implication that the "one-person" is succeeding in part because of their lack of support. Because of the derogatory connotations, and especially the implied insult to the teammates of the "one-person," it is not a good idea to use this term in reference to any team in your tournament when you are the TD or moderator.

Examples

One-person teams are frequently successful at the local high school level and occasionally competitive nationally. They usually cannot succeed against well-balanced attacks from multiple good players at the highest levels of either high school or collegiate quizbowl. No one-person team has ever won a high school national, but one has one a collegiate national.

High school

This table is a subset of teams which could be considered "one-player" under a loose definition of a single player getting roughly 50% or more of a team's tossup points per game. Entry on this list has been limited to teams that placed in the top 20 at either HSNCT or NSC.

School	Players	HSNCT	NSC
2010 St. Anselm's	Aidan, Brendan, Jacob, Matt Bollinger		4th
2010 Detroit County Day	Aamod Dekhne, Chris Schulte, Hannah Cheriyan, John Bernabei, Kevin Tan, Michael Dimattia, Neil Gurram	t-7th
2010 Georgetown Day	Alex Jiang, Matthew Jackson, Oliver Hudson	t-5th	t-5th
2010 Torrey Pines	Allison Zhao, Ashley Lo, Chris Wu, Howon Lee, Michelle Chen, Sharad Vikram, Stephen Liu	t-7th	7th
2010 Alpharetta	Gautam Narula, Kunal Naik, Nandhini Sundaresan, William Horton		t-16th
2010 Walt Whitman	Alex Luta, Alex Rosen, Douglas Graebner, Jeremy Steinberg, Oren Steinberg, Todd Pollak		13th
2010 St. Ignatius	Amy Brabec, Andrew Deveau, Brian Kenny, Jake O'Shea, Michelle Yuen, Vincent Kenny	t-43rd	15th
2010 Northmont	Brandon Williams, Dan Welch, Emmanuel Boakye, Emily Bingham, Michael Czupryn, Sam Blizzard	t-75th	19th
2010 Stevenson	Julia Wang, Kevin Malis, Mark Savin, Zach Blumenfeld		8th
2011 Centennial	Adam Silverman, Jenny C., Katherine Cannella, Nikhil Vallabhaneni	t-5th
2011 Copley	Edward Pang, Jeffrey Wang, Keval Yerigeri, Saajid Moyen	t-13th
2011 Stevenson	Collin Shapiro, Eugene Bulkin, Joe Schlude, Kevin Malis, Mark Savin, Zach Blumenfeld		4th
2011 Alpharetta	Gautam Narula, Kunal Naik, Nandhini Sundaresan, William Horton		13th
2011 St. Anselm's	Aidan Mehigan, Brendan Ziebarth, Jacob Wasserman, Patrick Merkle		19th
2011 Maggie Walker	J.R. Roach, Jordan Bekenstein, Saumil Bandyopadhyay, Seung Hwan Kim, Tommy Casalaspi	5th	5th
2012 Centennial	Adam Silverman, Claire Garland, Nikhil Vallabhaneni, Will June	4th
2012 Auburn	Abid Haseeb, Alex Pandya, Filip Milovanovic, Lloyd Sy	t-5th
2012 Ladue	Ben Zhang, Haohang Xu, Jialin Ding, Max Schindler	t-5th
2013 Belvidere North	Conor Reilley, Dylan Minarik, Emily Carrick, Patrick Moore	t-13th
2013 Loyola Academy	Ian Torres, Morgan Venkus, Zach Hayes	3rd
2013 Bellarmine	Abhishek Aditham, Hiep Nguyen, Sameer Rai, Sohan, Ved Paranjpe	t-8th
2013 Athens Academy	Claudia Evaristo, Edward Tie, Elyse Paneral, Jason Fern, Timmy Huang	t-8th
2013 Ladue	Ben Zhang, Haohang Xu, Jialin Ding, Max Schindler	2nd
2013 East Chapel Hill	Alex Li, Jacob Reed, Matt Dominguez, Salman Iftikhar, Sung-Hoon Kim	t-8th
2014 Western Albemarle	Angela Li, Caroline Koester, Eric Xu, Kelly Missett, Sam Lesemann	t-8th
2015 Harmony Science Academy	Ali Barreh, Brian Nardone, Henry Hawthorn, Peter Wofford	t-8th
2015 Naperville North	Amy Tien, Brandon Coy, Jakob Myers, Naman Priyadarshi, Nishaad Navkal, Raymond Li	t-13th
2015 Western Albemarle	Caroline Koester, Eric Xu, Kelly Missett, Sam Lesemann, Tim Dodson	t-5th	5th
2015 Northmont	Brendon Jenkins, Kara Combs, Lauren Papp, Rachel Tracy, Sam Blizzard	t-13th	12th
2016 Auburn	Cole Timmerwilke, Ethan Strombeck, Henry Roe	t-6th
2016 Stevenson	Ali Saeed, Kazuma Shimanaka, Nathan Cha, Young Fenimore Lee	t-13th
2016 Coronado	Andrew Barnett, Deepak Muthyala, Luke Minton, Sheel Patel	t-8th
2016 Darien	Andrew Benz, Brendan Berrigan, Julia Tong, Michael Borecki	t-8th
2016 Taylor	Ashwath Seetharaman, Eric Liu, Jacob Redland, Joseph Kusko, Oishik Saha, William Golden	t-13th
2017 Taylor	Ashwath Seetharaman, Jacob Redland, Joseph Kusko, Oishik Saha, William Golden	t-5th
2017 Naperville North	Emily Hou, Jacob Fisher, Jakob Myers, Jason Hu, Shawn Yoshida	3rd
2017 Lehigh Valley	Alex Schmidt, Jonathan Skee, Lucas Larkin, Ramon Torres	t-15th
2018 Lehigh Valley	Alex Schmidt, Nathaniel Schmidt	t-12th
2018 Beavercreek	Abby Cohen, David Cohen, Hari Parameswaran, Ziyi Zuo	t-5th
2018 Crystal Springs	Alice Jiang, Darren Jian, Justine French, Partha Rao	t-12th
2018 Miami Valley	John John Groger, William Groger	t-20th
2018 Dublin Scioto	Clark Smith, Edward Liu, Gabriel Pinto, Visvam Srinivasan		2nd
2018 Taylor	Ashwath Seetharaman, Jacob Redland, Joseph Kusko, William Golden	t-5th	4th
2019 Taylor	Jed Wang, Katie Sturzu, Mitchell Shadden, William Golden	t-5th	2nd
2019 Auburn	Ethan Strombeck, Justin Abel, Leif Verace, Lilly Chavez	t-8th
2019 Beavercreek	Abby Cohen, Hari Parameswaran, Tiffany Zhou, Tegan Kapadia	1st
2019 Troy	Alexander Borca-Tasciuc, Alexander Pyle, Kemal Pulungan, Rufus Hahn Nguyen-McDowell, Xavier Schlemmer	t-12th
2019 Barrington	Cecily Rea, Christina Curran, Daniel Sheinberg, Douglas Meeker	t-12th
2019 Thomas Jefferson (VA)	Benjamin Xu, Fred Zhang, James Kuang, Julia Zhou, Kevin Wang (TJ)	t-5th
2021 Arcadia	Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia), Brian Lam, Michael Kwok, Ryan Sun	t-5th
2021 Lambert	Aadi Karthik, Adi Krish, Anish Kayarthodi, Arjun Birthi, Vishal Sareddy	t-19th
2021 Buffalo Grove	Bruno Ibrahim Betts, Justin Wytmar, Rohan Ganeshan, Sanjay Manoj, Vashnuh Bala, Ximena Haramillo Mata	t-5th
2021 Wakeland	Arnav Kaul, Geetan Madala, Rajas Ketkar	t-19th