IASP State Finals

The IASP Senior Quiz Bowl State Finals are the current iteration of the Indiana Quiz Bowl State Championship, first hosted in 2020 after the Indiana Association of School Principals began sponsoring high school quiz bowl.

Format

State Finals is a closed-invite tournament where teams qualify by virtue of their performances at Indiana's Area Championships. The tournament features 18 teams, but only one team is permitted from each participating school. Teams are split into three pools of six in the prelims, then organized by record into three more pools of six; all teams are guaranteed at least eight rounds of play.

Prior to 2024, State Finals used a 16-team double-elimination format with three guaranteed games.

Qualification

The champion of each of Indiana's Area Championships receives an automatic bid to State Finals. Additionally, if an Area's field is large enough to necessitate splitting into two or more pools for the prelims, the runner-up also qualifies automatically. Beyond those auto-qualifiers, teams are given "at-large" bids based on their overall points per game over the course of the tournaments.

Prior to 2024, all Area Championships automatically admitted the top two teams to the State Finals, and "at-large" qualifiers were chosen purely by their points per game during the single-elimination playoff rounds of the tournaments.

History

The earliest known NAQT State Championship in Indiana was hosted by DePauw University in 2000, and lasted until 2002. There are no records of a championship being held in 2003, but another "NAQT Indiana State Championship" was hosted by Notre Dame in 2004 and won by Solon, a school from Ohio. From then on, the event became known as the NAQT Indiana State Qualifier, which was hosted by Culver in 2005 before finding a more long-term home at Saint Joseph. From 2006 to 2011, Culver hosted the Midwest Championship a couple of months after State, inviting teams from Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan.

In 2009, the State Qualifier was hosted by IU-Bloomington, but was suddenly accompanied by two other tournaments billing themselves as state championships; the Indiana Frosh/Soph State Championship at Culver, and the 4-quarter format Indiana State Championship at Harrison. The next year, Harrison's State Championship would become the Questions Unlimited Classic State Championship, while Saint Joseph once again hosted the NAQT State Qualifier. 2010 also saw the debut of the Rotary Club Northern Indiana Quizbowl Championship, which was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Indiana and drew a healthy field of 20 teams.

In 2011, Culver's Frosh/Soph State Championship changed hands to North White, who would host it until 2018. Having only drawn 4 teams from 2 schools the previous year, the NAQT State Qualifier was discontinued, and the Rotary Club's tournament became the Rotary Club Indiana Quizbowl State Championship. This tournament introduced several format changes, including splitting the field based on school size and running games with lightning rounds between 8-tossup halves. The Rotary Club's sponsorship went towards gaudy prizes for winning teams and coaches, leading to many isolated one-off appearances by inexperienced teams.

For several years, there were three regular state championship tournaments: Classic State at Harrison, Frosh/Soph State at North White, and Rotary Club State at Ancilla College. Rotary Club State's attendance consistently decayed with each year, likely due to Ancilla's inconvenient and very remote location, as well as the Rotary Club discontinuing many of their larger prizes. During this era, Saint Joseph began a long streak of state championship titles, possibly empowered by the school's Christian iconography. Starting in 2016, Rotary Club State could not attract enough small schools to justify splitting the field by size. In 2018, Frosh/Soph State became a division of Rotary Club State at Ancilla.

In 2019, Purdue University stepped in as the new host of Rotary Club State, resulting in the Rotary Club pulling its sponsorship. The resulting tournament was billed as the NAQT Indiana State Championship, and removed the lightning rounds from the format, restoring it to 20 tossups and bonuses per round. In attendance at the tournament was IASP Director of Student Programs Jill Slinker, who endorsed the IASP's sponsorship of state quiz bowl starting the following year. Purdue remained the host, but the state championship became closed-invite for the first time in its history, taking on a controversial double-elimination format.

In 2020, Harrison coach Lyn Schneider, the director of Classic State, retired as a teacher, but remained the tournament's director. After Harrison's quiz bowl team collapsed in 2021, Classic State found a new host in University High School of Indiana. In 2022, Carmel ended Saint Joseph's run of nine straight NAQT State titles.

Following lobbying by coaches, the IASP changed the State Finals format going into the 2024 season. The format proposed by coaches involved a carry-over game from the prelims to the playoffs, removing a playoff round. However, a miscommunication resulted in the tournament director neglecting the carry-over games. As a result, a 2-3 Herron was passed over for the final bracket in favor of a 1-4 Culver.

Results

This page records only the results of the NAQT state championship from each year. Results are tabulated back to 2016, since results before then are split apart by school size.

Year	Packet set	Sponsor	First Place	Second Place	Third Place	Fourth Place
2024	IS-228	IASP	Carmel	Park Tudor	John Adams	Culver
2023	IS-219	IASP	Carmel	Culver	Herron	Hamilton Southeastern
2022	IS-210	IASP	Carmel	Saint Joseph	Hamilton Southeastern	Crown Point
2021	IS-201	IASP	Saint Joseph	Carmel	Harrison	North Central
2020	IS-192	IASP	Saint Joseph	Harrison	Carmel	Culver
2019	IS-183	Purdue	Saint Joseph	Carmel A	Harrison	Carmel B
2018	IS-174	Rotary	Saint Joseph	Culver	Harrison	Mishawaka
2017	IS-166	Rotary	Saint Joseph	Harrison	Culver	Avon
2016	IS-156	Rotary	Saint Joseph	Harrison	Culver	North White