David Reinstein

David Reinstein

Noted subjects	Math
High school	coached at New Trier (1994-2011)
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

David Reinstein was a coach at New Trier from 1994–2011, the chair of IHSSBCA from 2004–14, and the president of PACE from 2016–18. He now writes the questions for the Scobol Solo, Masonic tournament, and IESA tournaments, and he runs Scobol Solo and Reinstein Varsity. David also produces match questions in IESA format, and he uses questions from the Masonic tournament to write the Reinstein Set.

Question Writing & Editing

David is the head writer and editor of the IESA, Scobol Solo, and Masonic sets each year, and he oversees several rounds produced for Illinois middle schools to use during the regular season. He has been in charge of Scobol Solo since it started in 2001, and he took over the Masonic set for the 2012 tournament. He has gotten varying amounts of help with the sets over the years, especially editing help from Jonah Greenthal. The middle school regular season questions were produced starting in the 2019-20 school year, and David became the question supplier for the IESA State Championship starting in 2023. David was also a significant contributor to NAQT from 2011-17, and for a few years he also wrote a bunch of questions for CMST.

For the 2012 IHSA set, David was the social studies editor. Because the writers flaked out, he wrote half the questions. For the 2013 IHSA set, David was the math editor and assistant editor for the whole set. When he told the IHSA that a bunch of the questions were copied and pasted from the internet, he was fired. Some other writers quit, and the questions got worse until the Head Editorship changed for the 2017-18 season. Reinstein and Jonah talked about the problem at a May 2014 Illinois General Assembly hearing on the IHSA‎.

Illinois Scholastic Bowl & Quizbowl

David has played a major role in IHSSBCA since the organization was about one year old. He first gained attention by starting a petition asking IHSA to improve question quality. Coaches from over forty schools signed the petition, and the result was that New Trier got a bunch of angry phone calls from IHSA. A few years later, however, IHSA improved its question quality somewhat when it switched from Answers Plus to a secret cabal. The Masonic Tournament used improved questions written in part by some of David's former students at Aegis Questions for 2008 and 2009, then regressed to Questions Galore for 2010 and 2011, then used David starting in 2012.

David has a long history of managing Turnabouts and writing letters and articles for IHSSBCA. He succeeded David Riley as Chair in 2004, and the organization grew under his leadership. Some of the programs that came into being while Reinstein was Chair are the Awards Dinner, Hall of Fame, ethics guidelines, moderator certification, annualization of SchoBowlFest, Novice Tournaments, IHSSBCA Grants, IHSSBCA Liaisons, and a Members Only section of their website. The organization now sponsors a team that competes at NASAT. (Before David took over and for his first few years, the organization sponsored a team that competed at PAC.)

Coaching

Reinstein coached consistently strong teams for many years at New Trier that placed highly at many local tournaments and had decent showings at Nationals. His teams won nine IHSA Sectionals, one each IHSA and NAQT State Championship, and many Central Suburban League titles.

Reinstein took over as coach when he started teaching at New Trier. He had planned on coaching Math Team, but that team already had many coaches, so he filled a need in Scholastic Bowl. He was told that he could have the position if he was willing to drive a van, since the other coach that year did not have a license. David has worked with several coaches over the years. After becoming a father in 1998, David dropped from attending all team matches to about half of them. In 2011, he stepped down from coaching, though he still teaches at New Trier.

Until its 2009 cancellation, Reinstein was an annual guest on the Kathy and Judy Show on Chicago's WGN radio during the week of the IHSA State Championship. Most of the time was spent asking sample questions to the hosts of the show, with somewhat humorous outcomes. It was annually the biggest publicity moment in Illinois Scholastic Bowl.

Tournament Hosting

In addition to an occasional IHSA or Masonic Regional or Sectional tournament, Reinstein has run the Scobol Solo each year since 2001. He at first did everything--writing the questions and drawing up the pairings, which involve roughly 400 matches each year put together using a power-matching format. He more recently gets significant help from Jonah Greenthal, who designed software that pretty much runs the tournament.

From 2005 to 2007, the New Trier Varsity was hosted by Carlo Angiuli and Nick Matchen, who graduated from New Trier in 2007. Reinstein ran it in 2008 and since 2014, while from 2009 to 2013 it was primarily run by Jonah Greenthal with help from Reinstein. In 2021, the tournament changed its name to Reinstein Varsity because it was not held at New Trier.

In order to separate David's tournaments from the New Trier Business Office, in 2016 David started Reinstein QuizBowl, which is a Doing Business As that handles the financials for David's tournaments and questions.

David also writes card systems for tournaments that power match. He has done so for the Scobol Solo since its inception, for the first day of HSNCT from 2010 to 2016, and for the first day of MSNCT from 2013 to 2016. In 2017, David was replaced by a computer.