Princeton University is an Ivy League institution in Princeton, New Jersey with one of the oldest quiz bowl clubs in existence.
History
Princeton has a lengthy though obscure history of participation in College Bowl. It is known that the club lost to Agnes Scott College in a 1966 episode of the TV program, and that it placed at 4th at CBI nationals in 1984, earning a plate that, though once having been thought to be stowed away in the club's trophy hoard, has unfortunately gone missing.
With the arrival of Jeff Stewart from BYU around 1994, Princeton's previously CBI-only program began attending and hosting ACF events. Princeton deaffiliated from CBI after the 1996-1997 school year. The legacy of the longtime CBI exclusivity has, as recently as 2021, still left an impact on the club, as its official email listserv and school email address officially utilize the phrases collegebowl and cbowl, respectively.
Princeton has, in the past, been relatively competitive on the national circuit. Led by Jeff Hoppes, Princeton won the Undergraduate title at ICT from 2000-2, and won an unofficial ACF Undergraduate title in 2000 and 2002. Since then, it has not won any national titles, though its full-strength A team won the undergraduate title at the 2020 Mid-Atlantic SCT and, alongside that year's Harvard B team, Carleton, and Delaware — the latter of whom they beat for the SCT UG Title in spite of a slightly lower D value — would have likely been in close contention for undergraduate titles at ICT and ACF Nationals, had they not been cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic.[1]
According to an NAQT interview with Patrick Matthews, Princeton and Penn had a "mostly friendly" rivalry in the College Bowl era, where Penn eliminated Princeton from qualifying for CBI NCT at the ACUI Regionals four years in a row.
Tournament Hosting
Years ago, Princeton hosted PARFAIT, which was originally a packet submission tournament and later became a house written tournament. Previous Princeton college tournaments included Buzzerfest (1997-2004, 2010) and the Orville Redenbacher Invitational (c. 1996-1997).
Today, Princeton hosts an annual high school tournament, traditionally using NAQT packets. The tournament has done so well in some years that it attracted teams from as far away as Detroit Central Catholic, and had as many as 69 teams in attendance. Other years, though, the tournament has had numerous issues, most notably in the form of major delays. Given the lack of large buildings on campus with many individual classrooms in a compact area, tournaments often by necessity are held across multiple buildings, occasionally to disastrous effect: PHSAT XXI infamously used five different buildings for a 48 team tournament. Later tournaments had buzzer sets break mid-tournament and some schools leave halfway through without notifying the tournament director.
Princeton has also hosted other college events like EMT and WAO II.
Recently, Princeton's club has collaborated with Rutgers to host the New Jersey NAQT State Championship.
Controversy
Princeton and Rutgers' decision to cancel going to ACF Regionals 2007 at Maryland controversially turned that tournament into a farce, consisting only of VCU, two house teams, and a high school team. As a result, a long argument between Matt Weiner, members of the Princeton team, and others flared up on the message boards in this thread.
Nationals Results
|
ACF Nationals (2005–) |
Division I ICT |
Division II ICT
|
| 1997 |
|
15th
|
| 1998 |
|
18th |
8th
|
| 1999 |
|
|
1st
|
| 2000 |
|
7th (1st UG) |
3rd
|
| 2001 |
|
6th (1st UG) |
4th
|
| 2002 |
|
4th (1st UG) |
5th
|
| 2003 |
|
18th |
16th
|
| 2005 |
|
9th |
|
| 2006 |
5th |
9th |
A: 6thB:5th
|
| 2007 |
|
25th |
|
| 2008 |
|
21st |
5th
|
| 2009 |
|
28th |
7th
|
| 2010 |
|
|
9th
|
| 2011 |
|
|
8th
|
| 2016 |
26th |
|
|
| 2017 |
16th |
|
17th
|
| 2018 |
|
|
11th
|
| 2021 |
|
14th (2nd UG) |
|
Former Members
Members with bolded names served as club president.
External Links
Title Succession
Unofficial title succession
- ↑ 2020 D Values
