Arcadia
| Arcadia Apaches | |
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|---|---|
| Location: Arcadia, CA | |
| Coaches | Christopher Schultz (2009-present) |
| State Championships | Southern California, Various years |
| National Championships | 2015 HSNCT |
| National Appearances | HSNCT: 2002, 2006-2021 |
| Program Status | Unknown |
| School Size | Unknown |
| NAQT Page | link |
Arcadia High School is a public high school located in Arcadia, California about 13 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. They are active members of the SoCal circuit in both quizbowl and history bowl and are often regarded as consistently among the premier powerhouses of the region. Due to the Basileus Incident, Arcadia is one of the few teams to have both won and lost games by 500 or more points at the same tournament.
Following a premature end to the 2019-20 season, Arcadia has recently been ranked as the top team in the SoCal circuit going into the 2020-21 season by Nick Dai of Westview.
History
Arcadia Quizbowl was originally led by coach Patrick Tierney. Albert Sylvia later coached the team through the 2000's up to 2009, when conflicts with track and Academic Decathlon led him to switch with Christopher Schultz, who has coached since.
The Arcadia quiz bowl team started in the 1997-1998 school year, when they competed at the NAQT tournament at Caltech. For some inexplicable reason, Arcadia refrained from attending tournaments at UCLA until the 2005-2006 school year, instead attending tournaments at UCI and USC. Their first UCLA tournament coincided with the team's emergence as an okay team in the Southern California circuit. Prior to this, the team put up mediocre stats at various iterations of Trojan Wars and the Caltech High School Tournament; nevertheless, the team managed to qualify for HSNCT in 2002. Because of the paucity of results, Albert Sylvia's vagueness about those teams' abilities, rampant attendance problems, and general apathy, this period was affectionately dubbed the "Dark Ages."
Starting in 2005, the team lead by Ben Chu and Roni Harwin showed marked improvement and managed to stumble into a win at the Caltech High School Tournament that fall. This qualified the team for HSNCT and convinced some of its members to begin, albeit hesitantly, to study for quiz bowl. Despite facing strong competition in the form of an explosive Santa Monica team and other regional powers such as Torrey Pines, San Dieguito, Edison, and Dana Hills, the team fared relatively well, securing top bracket finishes at most of the tournaments attended. Playing in more tournaments than ever before, the team got to witness first hand the Basileus incident as well as a strange episode involving a Santa Monica player lighting up and smoking mid-match. Their first serious foray into a national quiz bowl competition, the 2006 HSNCT was regarded as a failure as the team was still more interested in playing pranks and doing homework than actually playing quiz bowl.
Subsequent years saw Arcadia become one of the stronger teams within the Southern California circuit, albeit lacking the drama of 2005, as the team began to take quiz bowl more seriously. They began to delve into formats outside of NAQT, namely PACE and ACF, an initiative first proposed by co-captain Brian Leung in 2006/2007 but not realized until 2008/2009 due to a general lack of interest in the Southern California circuit. In 2008 Arcadia took first place at the UCLA Winter Invitational, defeating Rancho Bernardo in a close final match.
From 2009 to 2011, the Arcadia team began to consistently place in the top bracket of local competitions, even qualifying two teams for HSNCT at the UCLA State Championships competition in April 2011, something that hadn't happened since 2007.
At TWAIN XII in 2011, Arcadia sent a record-breaking 6 teams (A-F), double-qualifying in that same tournament. Later that year, they managed to qualify a C-Team for HSNCT at the NAQT SoCal State Champs, marking the first time they ever triple qualified.
In the 2012-2013 season, Arcadia set another Southern California record, sending 7 Arcadia teams (A-G) to the NAQT State Championship at Irvine High School. They triple-qualified for HSNCT, finishing t-33rd. This also marked the beginning of an era of Arcadia dominance that would last until 2015/2016: that year, Arcadia A lost only one game out of the 65 they played in the SoCal high school circuit.
In 2013-2014, Arcadia A was once again the best team in Southern California. They tied for fifth at HSNCT, their best result up to that point. Their B team also did okay.
The 2014-2015 school year marked one of the best years in Arcadia's history. Led by captains Kevin Wang and Yuqiao Zhao, Arcadia A was once again the undisputed best team in Southern California, going 83-1 on regular season tournaments over the course of the year and winning several tournaments without their top scorer Kevin Wang, who managed to place 2nd to Rancho Bernardo at WAT III while playing solo. They became the first Southern California team to ever win the HSNCT, placing 1st over the previous year's champion LASA A in a 410-285 final. They attended the first PACE NSC in the school's history, placing 9th while maintaining the highest PPB and number of powers. Two members of the A team, Kevin Wang and Justin Nghiem, also attended the 2015 NASAT, where they placed 1st alongside Kion You of Rancho Bernardo and Bruce Lou of Saratoga.
Known National Tournament Appearances
- 2002 HSNCT: 4-6, 41st place
- 2006 HSNCT: 5-5, 63rd place
- 2007 HSNCT: 6-4, 1-2 playoffs, T-33rd place (A), 6-4, 0-2 playoffs, T-49th place (B)
- 2008 HSNCT: 7-3, 1-2 playoffs, T-17th place
- 2009 HSNCT: 6-4, 1-1 playoffs, T-27th place
- 2010 HSNCT: 6-4, 0-1 playoffs, T-43rd place
- 2011 HSNCT: 6-4, 1-2 playoffs, T-33rd place (A), 5-5, T-112th place (B)
- 2012 HSNCT: 6-4, 1-1 playoffs, T-49th place (A), 6-4, 1-1 playoffs, T-49th place (B), 5-5, 101st place (C)
- 2013 HSNCT: 7-3, 1-2 playoffs, T-33rd place (A), 6-4, 1-1 playoffs, T-50th place (B), 5-5, 108th place (C)
- 2014 HSNCT: 8-2, 4-2 playoffs, T-5th place (A), 7-3, 2-2 playoffs, T-21st place (B)
- 2015 HSNCT: 8-2, 8-1 playoffs, 1st place (A), 5-5, 105th place (B), 6-4, 3-1 playoffs, T-21st place (C)
- 2015 NSC: 6-1, 3-2 playoffs, 7-0 superplayoffs, 9th place
Current Members
a lot of members
Former Members
- Andrew Wang
- Carl Tjo
- Jeff Xiao
- Derek Chou
- Alex Hu
- Alex Wang
- Eddie Xue
- Stanley Yuan
- George Dewey
- Tracy Lee
- Sunil Pedapudi
- Jarita Ta
- Neiman Tan
- Jacqueline Yue
- Jason Cheng
- Corry Wang
- Dustin Lieu
- Boyang Jiao
- Andrew Leung
- Justin Nghiem
- Kevin Wang
- Yuqiao Zhao
- Tridib Biswas
- Andrew Hoagland
- Lawrence Sung
- Amogh Kulkarni
- Ryan Sun
and many others.
External links
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