Ridgewood
| Ridgewood High School | |
| Location: Ridgewood, NJ | |
|---|---|
| Club Presidents | Leo Manwaring |
| Coaches | Amanda Valeri |
| National Championships | HSNCT: 2013, 2021 PACE: 2013,2014 ONCT: 2021 |
| Program Status | Active |
| School Size | 1767 |
| NAQT Page | link |
Ridgewood High School is in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Its alumni include David Madden, who captained the team to 2nd place at the 1999 NAC.
History
Pre-2019
In 2010, Madden returned to Ridgewood, restarting the team as coach from then for the next three or four years.
After attending the 2016 NAQT State championship, Ridgewood entered a period of relative dormancy in which the team only attended Hunter's SCOP and Prison Bowl tournaments. Instead, the team focused more on History Bowl events.
A new generation of quizbowl players at Ridgewood high school, many of whom played on the Benjamin Franklin Middle School Quizbowl team, did begin to take an interest in going to tournaments not run by Hunter. In 2019, the team went to Bard's BEST II run on the ILLIAC set; the team made playoffs. Their success at this tournament catalyzed their interest in all-subject quizbowl, as they really sprung into activity after it.
2019-2020
The 2019-2020 season saw Ridgewood begin to attend quizbowl tournaments regularly, as the club's then-vice president Nicole Pruitt started to actively use the forums to look for tournaments. The novice team finished second at SCOP 10, the team's highest place ever at that tournament. Led in scoring by history-based generalist Lexi Terman, the team qualified for HSNCT at the Morristown-Beard Fall invitational. In February of 2020, a split Ridgewood team qualified two teams for nationals at Big Lake Brawl IV; the A team's victory at that tournament was the first tournament win in all-subject quizbowl for Ridgewood since 2014's Livingston March Madness. In November, Ridgewood also hosted MAROON Bowl I, its first all-subject quizbowl tournament, run on WAIT; Millburn won this tournament.
2020-2021
In the 2020-21 season, Ridgewood continued its tradition of quiz bowling. The team won the Southside Season Starter on an IS-A set in September before qualifying for NSC at the LONE STAR Northeast mirror, where they were the only team to beat eventual winners Hunter A. They then qualified for HSNCT at the Ithaca Fall tournament, where they finished tied for fifth. Perhaps most impressively, however, was the team's victory in the Prison Bowl League, a tournament with one of the strongest fields in the Northeast. With this win, Ridgewood established themselves as one of the best quizbowl teams in the New York City metro area, finishing fourth at QuBit VII and eighth at the national high school WORKSHOP mirror, both of which featured some of the country's best teams. At nationals, the team finished tied for nineteenth place at the 2021 HSNCT, the team's highest finish at a national championship tournament ever. History-based generalist Aiden Dartley and captain (and fine arts player) Aum Mundhe both played for the 12th placed NJ B team at NASAT, marking Ridgewood's first appearance at NASAT since Esther Sun in 2013. The team also finished seventh in the Varsity division at the National History Bowl. With the advent of virtual quizbowl due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ridgewood ran MAROON Bowl II (won by Belmont), which used the SATURNALIA question set, on Discord. The team also ran a nationwide ACF Fall mirror (won by Belmont) and the Ridgewood Middle School invitational (won by Middlesex).