2021 HSNCT
| 2021 NAQT HSNCT | |
|---|---|
| Edited by | NAQT |
| Champion | Barrington |
| Runner-up | University Lab |
| Third | Detroit Country Day |
| Fourth | TJHSST |
| High scorer | William Groger, Miami Valley |
| Site | online |
| Field | 224 |
| Stats | [1] |
The 2021 NAQT HSNCT was held on May 29–30. It was hosted virtually through Zoom, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Barrington High School won the tournament, winning both games of an advantaged final against University Lab. Detroit Country Day won a third-place match against TJHSST. William Groger from Miami Valley was the top individual scorer, followed by Will McCurley (Baker) and Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy)).
Due to the relatively small field of 224 teams (compared to previous years), there were only 8 preliminary rounds instead of the usual 10.
| Quarterfinals | Semifinals | Advantaged Finals Unbeaten team has advantage | ||||||||||||
| 28 | Greenhill | 270 | ||||||||||||
| 18 | Detroit Country Day | 340 | 13 | University Lab | 340 | |||||||||
| 18 | Detroit Country Day | 230 | ||||||||||||
| 5 | Barrington | 305 | 13 | University Lab | 220 | 170 | ||||||||
| 10 | Arcadia | 295 | 5 | Barrington | 375 | 445 | ||||||||
| 5 | Barrington | 315 | ||||||||||||
| 3 | Thomas Jefferson | 310 | Third place | |||||||||||
| 3 | Thomas Jefferson | 490 | 18 | Detroit Country Day | 325 | |||||||||
| 7 | Buffalo Grove | 170 | 3 | Thomas Jefferson | 245 | |||||||||
NOTE: Seeds represent seeds at the start of bracket play.
Controversy
For 2021, HSNCT's registration fee was raised to $650, which was criticized by some for being much more expensive than the PACE NSC ($450) and the AQBL ONCT ($250).
A tossup in round 7 did not contain instructions to accept an answer that would have been correct early in the question, leading to protests in several rooms. One such protest decided a preliminary match between Adlai E. Stevenson and Carmel A; the protest committee ruled that Stevenson's answer was correct, but the decision was not communicated properly to the game officials, resulting in a 5-point loss for Stevenson. Though the error was retroactively corrected on NAQT's stats page, it affected the teams' playoff seeds, which could well have changed the outcome of the tournament.
Trivia
- The 2021 HSNCT was the first-ever good quizbowl national tournament to be hosted online.
- Barrington's championship was the first-ever national title won by an Illinois high school (not counting NASAT).
- The Barrington–Uni Lab final was the first-ever national final between two Illinois high schools.
- Belmont (ranked #8 in the GrogerRanks pre-nationals poll) was likely the highest-polling team ever to miss playoffs at a good quizbowl nationals.
| |||||||||||