The McLean Quiz Bowl team finished their season with a stellar performance, placing 21st nationally at the High School National Championship Tournament (HSNCT). The weekend tournament, which was hosted in Atlanta from May 22-24, brought together the top 320 quiz bowl teams in the country, with McLean representing two of those teams.
McLean’s performance improved significantly from last year’s finish of 49th place, earning one of the best results in the team’s history.
“Mr. Brocketti and Ms. Benedict have been faithfully coaching this team for over a decade now, and it was really nice to see them finally get a pretty good result,” sophomore Hudson Hu said. “This year, by record, is technically the best McLean team in history.”
McLean’s success this year has been largely attributed to the experience and team chemistry developed over the past few years. Notably, six of the nine members across McLean’s two teams are seniors.
“I think it was just individual skill being more refined, especially coming from our seniors who had another year to get more experience with the game and finalize their last year,” sophomore Tarek Elbehiry said.
Members also credited the success to the guidance and leadership of upperclassmen, many of whom have competed in quiz bowl since freshman year.
“The upperclassmen were a really big inspiration to all of us during the tournament and throughout the entire season,” Hu said. “It’ll be really sad to see all of our seniors move on, but I hope we’ll make them proud in the future.”
To qualify for playoffs and finish among the top 97 teams, McLean’s A team had to win at least six of their 10 preliminary games. Despite facing some of the strongest teams in the nation, including 13th place Henderson A, McLean’s A team managed to win seven preliminary rounds.
“There’s some games where we lose by a lot,” club sponsor Jeff Brocketti said. “[Although] it is mentally tough sometimes to lose games,we rebounded from all those and had good results after those matches.”
In the playoff rounds, McLean’s A team continued their momentum, winning two of four highly contested games. The team edged out a 335-320 victory over 21st place tied team Greenhill A and a 210-200 victory over 33rd place Frazer.
“We had a couple games where we won by just five or 10 points,” Brocketti said. “We had the Greenhill game that we won after we protested. The protest was accepted and then we got the follow-up question and we ended up winning the match.”
The victory kept McLean in the winner’s bracket and allowed the team to advance to several additional rounds. Ultimately, the team finished just a few rounds short of the national finals, with their run ending with a 215-425 loss to rivals Montgomery Blair A.
“Twenty-first place doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is quite an accomplishment,” Brocketti said.
While McLean’s A team advanced deep into the tournament, the B team finished with a 5-5 preliminary round record, narrowly missing the required six wins to qualify for playoffs and earning a 177th place national finish.
“Our B team performance was worse than last year, but that’s because Tarek, one of the best B team members last year, moved up to A team and helped them up there,” Hu said. “It was unfortunate to see us fall so many places, but it was for the greater good.”
Both teams navigated challenges throughout the season during their preparation for the national tournament, particularly as members moved between teams.
“I was actually a new addition to the team, and there were some challenges with communication initially,” Elbehiry said. “But overall, we managed to get past those problems because we had that cohesion and ability to work as a team.”
With more than two-thirds of the competing teams graduating next year, McLean’s Quiz Bowl club faces an even more significant period of transition.
“This is going to be a unique challenge,” Brocketti said. “We’ve never had this many graduating seniors from our A team before.”
Still, the team remains optimistic about the future of the program and hope to continue building momentum.
Our main goal is to keep the spirit of McLean Quiz Bowl alive and keep trying to get better,” Elbehiry said. “I believe that with the right training and leadership, we can move forward and do even better.”
