VCU
| Virginia Commonwealth University | |
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| Location: Richmond, VA | |
| Current President or Coach | Matt Weiner & Andrew Alexander |
| National championships | 2005 NAQT Undergraduate |
| NAQT Page | link |
VCU's quizbowl team is currently led by Matt Weiner, Evan Adams and George Berry, who are building a perfect society in which the mistakes of the past will be eliminated.
History
It should be noted that a VCU team, about which nothing else is known, attended a 1993 invitational tournament at Virginia as per this Usenet post, and teams from VCU participated in College Bowl at least in 1986 and 1996 according to College Bowl's database (as well as 1991 according to noted villain Tom Michael's page). Matt Weiner heard a rumor once that an ancient VCU team was banned for a time from College Bowl for using College Bowl packets in their own invitational tournament, but is not sure where he picked up this information or whether there is any truth to it.
More concretely, VCU quizbowl was founded by Matt Weiner in November 2002 by virtue of his attendance at the ACF Fall tournament held by Case Western. Through fall 2005, the team consisted solely of Weiner and the occasional socially-based appearance of Weiner's personal acquaintances who happened to be taking classes at VCU. Veterans of the Virginia high school circuit would frequently e-mail Weiner asking to join the team, then never express interest in attending any tournaments. Tournaments won by VCU in this time period were the 2003 NAQT Sectionals at Virginia, the 2003 Princeton Buzzerfest, the 2004 Maryland Terrapin, the 2005 NAQT Sectionals, the 2005 Manu Ginobili/Tony Parker at Maryland, and the undergraduate title at the 2005 ICT.
In spring 2006, the first new actual quizbowl players joined the team--freshmen Andrew Alexander and Vinod Kondragunta, where within eight days they experienced both the peaks and valleys of competition--winning their first-ever collegiate tournament (the 2006 ACF Regionals at Princeton) and playing on one of the most atrocious collegiate packet sets in recent memory (the 2006 NAQT Sectionals). Haris Niaz joined in 2007, and after four and a half years, Weiner's goal of bringing a team of four people to a tournament as "VCU" was finally realized. The newly constituted team won the 2006 UNC tournament, the 2007 NAQT Sectionals at George Mason, and the 2007 Maryland Terrapin.
The 2008 season saw Weiner move from player to coach and several new freshmen players, such as Timothy Fox, Evan Adams, and Mark Zimmerman join the program. VCU attended a team-record 11 tournaments, finishing as high as 2nd place in some events, and earning 16th and 19th place finishes at the two nationals. VCU also hosted six tournaments in the 2007-2008 year.
Tournaments
VCU has hosted several tournament at the high school, collegiate, and open levels.
Current Players
Former Players
Title Succession
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