WUHSAC
WUHSAC, or the Washington University High School Academic Competition, is Washington University's annual high school Quiz Bowl competition. It is run on house written questions and generally takes place in January or February. Teams participating can qualify for the PACE NSC.
Characteristics
WUHSAC is structured so that teams are placed into 6 team pools for preliminary round robin play. The top two teams from each pool are then placed within the playoffs, which generally begin with a round of 16. While in previous years, WUHSAC has avoided using wildcards in its playoffs, 4 wild cards were placed within its 2008-2009 iteration alongside the 12 teams which advanced from the six 6 team pools.
WUHSAC is also noteworthy as one of the few Missouri tournaments which draws a large number of out of state teams. These teams have consistently defeated the best teams Missouri has to offer, with the sole recent exception of North Kansas City's victories over New Trier and Rockford Auburn in 2007 and 2008 and Ladue's victory over Carbondale, also in 2008.
Finally, as one of the few tournaments in Missouri geared towards a national audience, the questions at WUHSAC are noteworthy for being more difficult than those of most Missouri tournaments.
Complaints
The increased difficulty of WUHSAC's questions relative to those of most Missouri tournaments have inspired some complaints from Missouri teams not used to national level questions.
More seriously, there has also been criticism by experienced players such as Charlie Dees about the increase in difficulty of questions as they progress from preliminary to playoff rounds, especially in the 2008 iteration. [1] Though such criticism by Dees on the High School Quiz Bowl Resource Center forum elicited no public response by the members of the Washington University Academic Team, they were taken very seriously, with efforts taken to eliminate any increase in difficulty between preliminary and playoff rounds in the next iteration of WUHSAC, WUHSAC XI.
Because of this, when similar allegations were made by players such as Will Hack and Charles Hang regarding WUHSAC XI, they were strongly denied. [2] Even if such an increase in difficulty did exist at WUHSAC XI, it was minor relative to that of WUHSAC X.
Results
| Year | Champion | Runner-up | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | New Madrid County Central | Unknown | |
| January 2000 | Bartlett High School | Unknown | |
| December 2000 | Bartlett High School | Lafayette High School | |
| 2002 | Detroit Catholic Central High School | Walton High School | |
| 2003 | Detroit Catholic Central High School | St. Andrew's Episcopal | |
| 2004 | New Trier High School | Detroit County Day School | |
| 2005 | Dunbar High School A | Dunbar High School B | |
| 2006 | Dunbar High School | Madisonville North Hopkins | |
| 2007 | North Kansas City | New Trier | |
| 2008 | North Kansas City | Rockford Auburn | |
| 2009 | Rockford Auburn | Carbondale |