What is your name and affiliation?

Would you like to remain anonymous?

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Top 5 were very close and could have gone any way. John John and Siff probably have the strongest support, with Dean and Karsten next, and Avinash last in terms of support. All of them had strong teams this season, but Dean's comparative less support (mainly coming from Ben Hu, who while very strong is not as strong as John John's support in William or Siff's support crew of Arthur and Alex) not stopping Millburn from achieving similar to success as Miami Valley (and better than GDS), and Dean's greater ability to scale up to higher difficulty at tournaments like EFT when compared with John John gave him the edge. Avinash and Karsten are both young supergeneralists with very impressive specialism and ability to scale up (see again: EFT), but lack as much success - yet without solid teammates Avinash has still managed to make himself a top national contender, a true testament to his skill.

From then on, it was all about who could perform the most consistently at harder difficulties, with specialism and generalism being treated the same way. For example, Govind is not a supergeneralist in the same way as the top 3, but his history prowess and seamless ability to scale up (putting up 1 power per game on Penn Bowl individually while Miami Valley as a team put up .9 powers per game for context) made him a definite top contender. A potential hot take might be putting Kris Noori so high, but his insane EFT and MWT stats in collegiate fields (including anecdotally taking literature off of Justine French, a top player at the college level) makes me think I may have underranked him if anything.

This justification is slightly nullified now that I edited my top 8, but I stand by my reasoning.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

Karsten as a sophomore had a super impressive performance at EFT against a field with college teams, Amogh has led in scoring a surprisingly solid Arcadia in a circuit that includes other strong teams that Westview which Arcadia has been able to match up too, Aadi put up I think 3 p/g per BLAST in a pretty good field and is generally solid generalist, Shiva has been shadowed in history slightly by Karan and Josh but still puts up insane numbers on a very strong OHS team, Cooper has led Hotchkiss to a surprisingly successful season which even included an upset victor over Karsten's top tier Philipps Academy team

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10), Phillips Academy

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10)

okay well i kind of have to vote myself first but my reasoning is fairly straightforward, i had the most powers of any hser on every set i played this year other than an A set in September.
Amogh's online stats are insane and his in-person results, specifically on mACF, make him my #2 pick
Aadi dominated Georgia this year and put up very impressive numbers on a variety of sets.
Kapil is a very strong player who could have been higher here had Alabama stats not been so hard to understand at times.
Shiva is very shadowed on SOHS but still put up wild power numbers and i feel good putting him here.

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Rishabh Wuppalapati (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9) (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Aadit Juneja (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Elliott Lee (Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech, 9)

Statistics combined with field and considering shadows

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Stats considering field and shadows

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Aadit Juneja (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Jared Dong (Springfield, 9)

The reason I have this unorthodox top five is because I based this on generalism rather than specialties in one specific category. For example, Owen is insanely strong in literature and science, but still continues to show some excellent stuff in the other categories as well. Time to time his stats show how great of a player he is with power percentage. Aadit Juneja is getting crazy good as a history based generalist. He continues to show great stats in both Raft and other sets and continues to show generalism in ppb and other statistics. Jacob Hardin Bernhardt is already crazy good at History and CE and is rapidly expanding to different categories. Just watch out everyone. Lukas is also an incredibly strong generalist but I put him slightly below JHB because I think his other generalist knowledge is only a hair below... this could go either way. I put Jared Dong (Springfield, 9)at Top 5 because he's already crazy good at literature and myth and is almost the silent killer on other categories. He shows insane generalism both irl and not and he is gonna be super dangerous very soon.

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10) [Hunter]

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Aadit Juneja (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Owen is Owen. Jacob and Ian are extremely close together as they cover the same categories and get remarkably similar stats. Lukas is really good. Aadit had a great season.

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Rishabh Wuppalapati (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9) (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

I have seem many of these players in action and they have all made the considerable jump to high school with grace and all of them have wide ranges of knowledge. Furthermore, each has tried to fit into their existing teams and bring the missing elements often causing them to go far out of their comfort zones, which is the over-and-above that I think makes a great Freshman player.

Jonathan Shauf, Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Charles Yang (Lexington, 12)

Cerulean Ozarow (Hunter, 11)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

painstaking pouring through stats

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

painstaking pouring through stats

Pareekshith Krishna (Mission San Jose, 9), Mission San Jose High School

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Pareekshith Krishna (Mission San Jose, 9)

Cavan Gabaldon O'Neill (BASIS McLean, 9)

Owen Farra would definitely be first in my rankings, as can be seen by his remarkable ability to scale to HS Nats level, which can be seen by his performance at SCT-DII in Missouri, where he and his team beat Ladue to win 1st place. He is really good at the humanities (from winning Humanities Bee last year) and can be considered a strong generalist, and his performances at Southern Illinois Solo indicate just that.

Jacob is a really strong history and CE player (made quarterfinals in JV History Bee as an 8th grader), and his stats at Princeton, where he scored over 40 points per game, while Ian and Andrew scored over 90 points per game. This is the team that defeated High Tech A and got 7th place out of 36 teams.

I would put myself at 3rd in the ballot, even though many might not consider me for the top 5 because of the shadow effect produced by Avinash. Avi is one of the top 5 players in the nation, and trying to get buzzes while he is there is extremely difficult. My fortes are history, the Hindu religion, and literature, and I cover the parts of history which Avinash hasn't already learned. Despite this shadow effect, I was able to score over 40 points per game at Cal Cup I, where we destroyed our competition, with Avinash scoring over 130 points per game and our team averaging about 11 powers per game. I am much better at NAQT than mACF, as can be indicated by my lackluster performances at Cal Cups II and III (stats were incorrect for Cal Cup 3, so my PPG should have been higher).

I would definitely rank Ian as 4th, because his prowess as a power-more, neg-less player has made him even scarier than last year. At Princeton, he scored over 30 points per game, while Jacob and Andrew (two amazing players in their own right) combined for over 100 points per game. His depth in history (also made JV History Bee quarterfinals in 8th grade) makes him a formidable player and a top 5 pick.

Finally, I would put Cavan as 5th in the list. Last year, I played him in the final preliminary round of MSNCT, and he came razor-close to upsetting us (my team was Hopkins, the 3rd place team from last year). He has become exponentially better this year, with an amazing statline of 50 powers and 55 tossups at IS-190. However, in this tournament, he had a large number of negs (36 in 11 games), so I didn't rank him even higher. However, at the rate he is improving, he can definitely be a top 3 sophomore next year.

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Pareekshith Krishna (Mission San Jose, 9)

Rishabh Wuppalapati (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9) (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

1. Yours truly has clearly lost enough times to Owen to know how good he is...
2. High power count even when he played on Hunter A, and his stats on the B team are extremely good
3. Slightly lower stats than Jacob but still seems very, very good
4. Usually shadowed heavily by you-know-who, but his CC2 stats demonstrate high skill - not to mention that he scores a decent amount even while playing alongside you-know-who
5. Also puts up high stats, and even had 32 PPG on the extremely difficult Penn Bowl set

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

1. The stats speak for themselves - not to mention the strength of the teammates he shadows (e.g. Vincent)
2. Whether or not you look at his online tournament stats, Amogh clearly seems better than every other sophomore except Karsten - he's by far the top scorer on a very strong top 30 team
3. Put up very high stats on EFT and is generally a highly skilled all-around player, as top scorer on a top 30 team
4. A very strong literature specialist who puts up lots of powers even against stacked DC area fields - his consistently high PPG implies strong generalism as well
5. A strong science(?)-based generalist who seems to consistently put up high stats, though not as high as the above 4 relative to their respective fields

George Tagtmeier from Alcuin School

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

I think these are some of the best players

Abhinav Karthikeyan - Richard Montgomery High School

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Justin Posner (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Cavan Gabaldon O'Neill (BASIS McLean, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Elliott Lee (Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech, 9)

No hot takes lol..doesn't warrant any justification

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

no hot takes means no justification lul

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Justin Posner (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Chris Tong (Montgomery Blair, 11)

I generally tended to rank Generalists > Specialists, and made sure to take into account strength of region.

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Cavan Gabaldon O'Neill (BASIS McLean, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Elliott Lee (Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech, 9)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Cavan Gabaldon O'Neill (BASIS McLean, 9)

Pareekshith Krishna (Mission San Jose, 9)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

1-3: no justification is really required. I could maybe see 2 and 3 switched.

4: William Orr (Langley, 10) is very good and scales very well at lit and vfa. He can also generalize at lower difficulties.

5: This is probably the only pick on this list which can be said to even resemble a "hot take".

I think there is a productive comparison to made between my fifth pick and the noted best player in the country, Matt Siff. Much like Matt, though Cooper may not put up the most jaw-dropping stats, he has a definite, almost indescribable ability to win games against teams which initially seem to overshadow his (note Cooper's wins against EB and PA). He is also notable for his ability to "accelerate", as a tournament goes on. Cooper seems to consistently play better later in the day, against better teams. Cooper is, moreover, also one of the nicest and most pleasant people I have had the privilege of meeting through QB. This fact did not affect my decision to place him where I did in my ballot, but it is a fact worth stating.

As an aside, this year has been an outstanding one for sophomores in general, and I think it would be wrong of me to only give the names of five people to be commended. Therefore, here is a list, put together in no particular order, of a number of other sophomores who have, beyond a doubt, earned praise and recognition for their outstanding performances this season: Benjamin Hu, Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10), Albert Ho, Peter Chen, Pratyush Jaishanker, Gus Carvell, Ryan Sun (Arcadia, 10), Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10), Lyra Gemmill-Nexon, Kapil Nathan (Hoover, 10), Mitchell Shadden, Ean Casey, Gokulan Anand, Josh Rubel, Ean Casey, Joseph Chambers, Lawrence Zhao, Rohit Lal, Nathaniel Kang, Max Brodsky, and many, many more.

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Justin Posner (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

I sorted everyone into three tiers -- overwhelming first scorers on great teams, first scorers (but not overwhelmingly so) on great teams, first scorers on good teams. This poll definitely has a generalist bias but what can I say.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Gabe Forrest (College Heights Christian, 10)

1. karsten is easily the best sophomore atm in my eyes, he puts up absurd stats very consistently
2. amogh is improving scary fast and is becoming a force to be reckoned with on several categories
3. aadi, having played him, is very scary and a very capable player in music and science
4. benjamin is just an overall good player
5. i am also an overall good player but i'd say i'm not as good as benjamin

Ned Tagtmeier, St. Mark's School of Texas

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Ketan Pamurthy (TAG Magnet, 11)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Deepak Gopalakrishnan (High Tech, 11)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Charles Yang (Lexington, 12)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Avinash has consistently put up really good stats, with over 8 powers per game on IS-188 but also 2.6 powers per game on EFT, which shows he can perform across categories. He also puts up really good PPB in basically all categories that aren't trash or PSS. Karsten second might seem a bit hot, but he put up by far the best tossup stats on EFT and also had a great performance on WAIT. Matthew Siff has really great scaleability, as shown by his solo EFT PPB and pretty good Terrapin Open performance. Then I put some more of the consensus top players in an order that seemed good to me. I threw Tegan and Raymond in there because Tegan leads one of the best teams in the country with great power stats and I played Raymond and it was very scary. After that I just kind of looked at a bunch of top Groger ranked teams and thought "who on this team do I feel like ranking?" so it gets a bit arbitrary towards the bottom.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

This is based on the players that have impressed me most when I've played them.

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Justin Posner (Richard Montgomery, 11)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

For those of you who read my top 30 teams justification, this will be similar. Across the board, I used seniority to differentiate between players I found nearly identical. I also approached this using Arjun Nageswaran's sort of paradigm about "which of these players would bring the most to their teams in a nats situation." I'll start at the top. Mr. Matt Siff is the best quizbowl player in the country this year. He's got an incredibly deep knowledge base, and, as a generalist, is better than many specialists as their categories. He scales across the board [EFT], and is just what I would call a pog player. 2-5 were hard to rank. This is why Dean takes number two over Avinash, though both are excellent players of a similar caliber. Looking at EFT, their performances are roughly comparable, even though Avinash outscored Dean by ~18ppg, Dean was also playing with support that put up ~45 ppg, while Avinash was solo. I looked at final rankings/Groger rankings to determine that Millburn as a whole has been stronger on the year [I easily slotted them in the top 3 in my ballot for top 30 teams], and I felt that Millburn was stronger than MSJ by a wider margin than Dean's support is stronger than Avinash's, if that makes sense. Don't need to belabor the point more here, both are excellent players. John John was also easy for me to put in at number four, easily a top generalist and top player, also on an MVS team that was in my top 3 overall. I put him below Dean and Avinash because I think his support in William is stronger than the support for Dean or Avinash. Karsten is very, very good. High power numbers and a very good individual performance [though high neg] on EFT. Definitely the top sophomore, and I think his string of performances this year justify him in the top 5. I don't think I could justify ranking Karsten any higher than fifth, though, just due to the caliber of the players I ranked above him. I guess the next bloc is 6-11. I will defend Katherine as a top 10 player in the country -- she is the top scorer on that Blair A team, a really, really, really, good [really!] science specialist who scales well to nats, and also has a quiet generalism that allows her to pull down questions in other categories like fine arts/literature and occasionally RMPSS. On a team with three other history players [Matthew, Shawn, Albert], she is the most valuable contributor to non-history categories. While driving her team's success, she puts up specialist-caliber statlines [see her HFT performance, going 37/5/5. For Govind/Shahar, this may be a bit of familiarity bias, but I picked Govind on scalability -- his 10 powers and 51 ppg on Penn Bowl [while playing next to Arjun, who put up 43 ppg on this set], though against a high school field, was thoroughly impressive, and Govind is an excellent player beyond just his well-known deep history specialism. Shahar also posted a great statline against a number of college teams on MWT, and is a very good generalist. However, I chose Govind to go in the 7 slot. I think Karan and Raymond are pretty self-explanatory -- Raymond is at worst a top 15 player, and I felt this was a reasonable slot for someone who has had an incredible season leading a top team. This is similar for Karan, to whom I gave an edge because he generally plays in a more competitive circuit, and I felt was deserving of a spot here as a great sci/afa/history esque player leading this Stanford Online team. And Basil is also quite good. Acton-Boxborough doesn't crack the top 30, in my opinion, but Basil is certainly a very good individual player, who, especially as a senior has been explosive and all around bringing a great deal to his team -- see his insane 142+ ppg on HFT [though admittedly on a somewhat deserted field -- it still did consist of Lexington, Belmont, and several Choate teams. I need to speed this up so I'll do 12-21. Dylan Bowman is good -- probably the best player on what I think is #1 team in the country. That puts him here -- shadow and good teammates and all. Eshaan is really good now and has been very good for a long time. I think if him being here on this ballot is surprising, it's more as a function of him being forgotten/underranked in other ballots, due to the isolated nature of his circuit. These next three are also top scorers on top teams -- Jason Hong is very, very good -- his 11 powers on Penn Bowl are extremely impressive, and he is the top scorer on what is, in my opinion a top 8 or top 10 team in the country, even though he does play with Jeffrey Ma, who is a very good specialist. I hesitated to put Jason higher due to his broader performances at EFT and Penn Bowl, but this may have something to do with field strength [NorCal uh oh]. Tegan put up very impressive stats on RAFT. I am willing to believe that he is a very strong player, but my reservations about Beavercreek as a whole apply to Tegan as a player as well -- I'd like to see him play a more competitive field before moving him up -- he has some very impressive performances on regs sets against teams like Miami Valley and DCC, though. Robert Dedvukaj has also been very impressive this year, putting up a solid statline on both MWT and BLAST. He leads this kind of question mark of a DCC team that is generally agreed to be top 20 but it's unclear where. One of those things we could've used a nats to find out. Amogh from Arcadia very good, taking his already impressive in person performances against other top teams on the SoCal circuit, in addition to some online performances [check out MWT] -- I was hesitant to rank him higher than I did, but I think he could contend with some people above. Pedro is a very impressive player all around, but it's hard to say how high he should rank, as Hunter is quite balanced, however I believe Pedro to be a very good player with the deep knowledge in his specialties, which has to count for something. I believe he "brings the most" to Hunter in a nats situation, especially with his CE prowess. Abhinav Karthikeyan is a low-neg fiend from Richard Montgomery. Not sure if this is regional bias or not [probably is], but he is a *very* impressive player on geo and CE, as well as a very deep history and literature player. RM was pretty underranked this year, in my opinion, and Abhinav definitely packs a punch as one of the two juniors making up the core of this team [the other being number 21, Justin Posner]. Justin is much higher neg but also is very deep in similar categories -- some lit, history, and RMPSS. The two manage to both put up crazy stats despite playing together. Which brings me, somewhat out of order, to Shardul. Shardul is very knowledgeable across fine arts and is a solid history player as well. See his solid performance on EFT at UMN, he scales fairly well and has led this Mound's View team to a top 30 spot this season -- definitely lifts his team up with him. And uh, I guess I'll do the 22-30 in one fell swoop here. One elite, top generalist player is generally not enough to take the team to heights as great as those Miami Valley reached. William Groger is the missing piece on this Miami Valley team -- shadowed by his brother, William is nonetheless very impressive. See EFT stats or Penn Bowl stats, or even WAIT and "Rowdy Raider" on 188. These latter two are regs sets with weaker competition, but William managed to put up 156 ppg on an IS set playing effectively solo. William will continue to be a top individual player after John John graduates. Arjun I feel is a similar caliber as/similar situation to William -- playing with another strong history player [Govind], Arjun has been shadowed, but is a very good player in his own right, putting up a very solid performance at Penn Bowl, very close to Govind's own performance. Ethan Ashbrook is another of the massively impressive triad on the Uni Lab team. I can't say it better than his own teammate, Dylan Bowman: "Ethan Ashbrook is a literature and thought specialist, with some deep areas of knowledge in religion, mythology, and fine arts. He's generally considered to be a top-5 or top-3 literature player in the nation, which I would agree with. I basically never see him drop literature, even to me. From observation, his best areas seem to be drama and long fiction, although his poetry and shortfic are certainly elite. One time he powered 2 literature off of John Lawrence. His literature knowledge base is a mix of deep stuff that he's read and deep stuff that he mindlessly carded (lul). He has read a lot of books (not exactly sure how many but he's a voracious reader). I think he has somewhere around 35k cards and his performance depends a lot on how much he's been reviewing. His pet categories outside of literature include analytic philosophy, Coen brothers movies, and Nintendo. Ethan put up 8 powers in 9 rounds of Penn Bowl, which was one of the highest from a high schooler. I think his power spread was something like 6 literature, 1 philosophy, and 1 social science. He was consistently the lead scorer on Uni this year at tournaments, except on IS-188. He's also a capable generalist, as he covers various areas of American history, physical sciences, and music/ofa without Jonathan or I. Unfortunately, he didn't have any chances to showcase his generalism this year. Ethan plays (comparatively) poorly online so I wouldn't take those stats into account (nor should you be taking them into account anyway, read Karan's comment); he's a god in-person." Aadi is also pretty good. His science/auditory fine arts are particularly good, and he has delivered some very good performances, boosting Lambert up to a very high performance nearly solo. Definitely a top player. Sanjeev's performance on the difficulty Fall Open set shows that he is a very, very good player. Sanjeev also posted fantastic stats on WAIT and BLAST -- my only reservation about putting Sanjeev higher is just that I don't know that much -- and there isn't that much in the way of stats to justify a higher place. Definitely one to watch. These last four are pretty random order I'm not gonna lie. These are all good players. I may have put myself too high. Matt says I need to stop and go to bed because I spent too long on this poll. There are also several people I could've put but didn't [special s/o, Chris Tong and Will Orr].

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

I think these five in some order are a pretty uncontroversial top 5 -- though I certainly could have included Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10), Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10), or Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10), all excellent players as well. Karsten I thought was an obvious top sophomore -- he is a top 10 player even in the overall poll. Amogh at 2 was also a pretty safe one for me, also probably cracking the top 20 [I think] of my overall poll. I've played Will Orr in real life, and he has only gotten better since then -- his upward momentum never ceases to amaze, he is really, really good at literature and fine arts across the board, with knowledge in history and RMPSS as well. If he shores up his science hole for next year, watch out. Aadi is very impressive as well, and someone whom I only played online, but I think the fact that he has boosted Lambert to top 30 with almost no support speaks volumes -- also note Aadi's particular strength in science and AFA especially. Benjamin I had to put in here -- he is a very strong individual player, with depth in I believe humanities-esque subjects [including social science] and very good scaling ability, as evidenced by EFT and DECAMERON. This doesn't really come up in the HS canon but he is also quite good at linguistics, interestingly. I hope these justifications are satisfactory.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

Karsten- no cap, he's the best, scales to college immensely well, one of the best literature players in the country.
Aadi has scaled immensely well this year, he deserves to be second
Shiva is Shiva- really good generalist, particular strength in history
I think I should be here given some of my stats, and buzzword (even though I know that buzzword can not be fully trusted).
Cooper is rather self-explanatory, took on a full Hunter A team and racked up an impressive PPG leading HKiss this year

Conor Thompson, Iowa State University

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Ketan Pamurthy (TAG Magnet, 11)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Cerulean Ozarow (Hunter, 11)

Jisoo Yoo (TAG Magnet, 11)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Mostly based on reading the thread + discussing with other players who have a more complete knowledge of the HS circuit than I do. In general I tend to overvalue strong specialists; I look at player polls like "if I were participating in the Quizbowl Draft and this was my first pick, who would I take"; I would absolutely take a strong specialist pretty highly.

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Rishabh Wuppalapati (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9) (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Owen: obvious #1 this year, his stats speak for himselves
Rishabh: super strong specialist who can scale up scary well (35ppg on Penn Bowl as a 9th grader is actually insane)
Jacob+Ian are both very very good and shadow each other; Lukas has put up really strong numbers as a solo player against tough fields

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Cooper Roh (Hotchkiss, 10)

Karsten is insane
Amogh is also insane but not as insane as Karsten
BMB is scary and scales up extremely well
Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10) knows lots of things
Cooper is a very solid team leader

Charles Yang, Lexington High School

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Nathan Sheffield (Belmont, 11)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Charles Yang (Lexington, 12)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Cerulean Ozarow (Hunter, 11)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Vincent Fan (Phillips Academy, 12)

I don't have personal experience playing most of these people, so I just looked at a lot of stats, supplemented with Groger Ranks and the forums thread where everyone shilled for their teammates/friends. I didn't look at online tournaments or anything easier than IS sets, mostly focused on regs/regs+ housewrite stats. I will admit to having a bit of a bias towards generalists, since it's easier to tell who's a standout generalist just based on stats. In particular, it was hard for me to order the Hunter and Uni Lab people without much firsthand experience, since their PPGs are all fairly similar. Also I've probably overlooked some good people from other circuits that I've just never heard of, sorry about that.

Avinash Iyer, Mission San Jose

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Jackson Lee (East Brunswick, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Zaid Siddiqui (Detroit Country Day, 11)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Postseason General Player Poll

Disclaimer: I would likely have made a much more accurate poll had nationals happened. Also, too many people are good at quizbowl but I'm pretty sure I haven't left any egregious errors (though do remove this poll if there are any egregious mistakes)
1. Matthew Siff: GDS was definitely slated to pique interest this year and they definitely did. Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12) is a very strong generalist as seen by his EFT stats, where even solo he managed a respectable 17 ppb. What I think makes him better than both Dean and John John is his clutch factor, where he and his team are able to eke close wins.
2. Dean Ah Now: Dean may not cover as many subjects as John John, but what I think puts him at #2 on this list is his reliability. Dean does not neg very much and is able to cover the humanities up to the college level (as seen by his very solid EFT stats).
3. John John Groger: John John is the top scorer on the third place team, but without a nationals our only sight at his performance on harder questions is EFT (where he and William were nearly able to beat Michigan!). I was very on the fence with putting John John third, but Dean’s ability to put up his stats in such a strong field made me pick him over John John. However, it’s essentially splitting hairs between these top three.
4. Avinash Iyer: I would say I’m the #4 player due to the fact that I am a more variable player with a higher neg rate than the previous three players, but I have more of an X-factor due to my aggressive play style and cross-category coverage than the ensuing people in the 4–8 tier. However, I would say that I’m one of the best solo bonus players on the scene, as seen by my “team’s” 18.04 ppb at EFT. However, I think my aggressive play style costs me in comparison to the previous three players.
5. Karsten Rynearson: Karsten is also a bit of a variable player such as myself and Shahar. I put him below me but above Shahar (even though the three of us are very close to each other in skill) because I feel I have the best general coverage of all of us. However, Karsten’s EFT stats speak for themselves when it comes to his skill at tossups (he had the most powers/game of any HSer in an in real life field).
6. Shahar Schwartz: Shahar is a very strong literature and science player, one of the best I would say. His play style is very similar to mine (very aggressive), which means that at times his team can lose due to negging. However, when his team pops off, they can put up some insane stats (see: Del Norte Edgehog III, where his team put up >7 powers/game).
7. Jason Hong: Saratoga’s wonderboy gets as high as this placement due to his absolutely bonkers skill at learning his teammates’ categories (so much so that he’s an effective generalist in his own right). I think he definitely would be at a higher placement, but I’m working off local tournaments where his skill is often overshadowed by the sheer amount of buzzer races that occur in game.
8. Karan Gurazada: Karan is one of the most consistently strong Science and FA players, and the lack of a nationals really hinders how good he is at hard questions. Especially this year due to Stanford Online gaining much-needed literature coverage and his ability to be competitive at most questions, I think he definitely deserves to be in the top ten of players. 

I was splitting hairs between top three as well as ranks 4-8.
There are too many good players, so the following are who I believe to be the remaining 22 top players in an order that’s not completely set. I would wager you should give about a 3 placement range among the following people, minimum.

9. Govind Prabhakar: The best history and religion specialist deserves a spotlight, but due to the very strong support that he has from Arjun and David, I didn’t think he was as good of a generalist as the members of the 4–8 tier. However, he’s definitely one of the best players at high difficulty history and religion questions such as the kinds which come up at NASAT, PACE, etc.
10. Dylan Bowman: I chose Uni Lab’s science/FA player due to his extensive generalism alongside being a very strong science and FA player. His teammates (Jonathan and Ethan) are more specialised but no less strong, which is why I included the entire Uni Lab trio in the poll.
11. Raymond Wang: Ithaca’s lead scorer, Lit, AFA, and myth specialist Raymond is very, very good. The main reason I put him so high is that his and his team’s stats on EFT were very, very dominant even if you count the reduced field strength.
12. Robert Condron: All the Strake Jesuit A team players are very, very good, but Robert is definitely the most generalised of the members. He’s also a very good question writer.
13. Abhinav Karthikeyan: Abhinav’s a very strong history and literature player, but due to RM’s general lack of bonus skill in comparison to the other strong teams in the region (GDS, TJ), I didn’t place Abhinav as high.
14. Eshaan Vakil: Eshaan did very well at the tournaments he played this year (including EFT and the ACF Fall mirror he came up to NorCal for, where his team got a very strong 20.48 ppb).
15. Robert Dedvukaj: Another Robert, another strong humanities based generalist on a strong team. DCC made a strong improvement this year, eventually culminating with a very strong 30 powers at MWT and nearly 10 powers/game at LOGIC.
16. Ethan Ashbrook: Uni Lab’s very own Lit/RMPSS player is a bit more specialised than Dylan, which is why I didn’t place him as high as Dylan, but he’s still very good at scaling up (as seen by his Penn Bowl stats, where he got nearly 1 power/game).
17. Jonathan Lau: Ethan and Jonathan are both very good quiz bowlers, but the reason I put Ethan over Jonathan is due to Jonathan’s specialties being less general than Ethan. All three of the Uni Lab trio are very good at quizbowl.
18. Katherine Lei: Katherine is one of if not the best science player in HS quizbowl this year, and as top scorer on Blair A at HFT proved that she was a very strong player, getting nearly 4 powers/game while having very few negs.
19. Tegan Kapadia: Beavercreek is a top 5 team this year, meaning that Tegan definitely deserves a spotlight as Creek’s top scorer. He’s a very effective generalist and had quite a lot of powers at the tournaments he played this year (he got 64 on RAFT, 53 on HFT, and 35 at BLAST).
20. Ned(ward) Tagtmeier: Nedward is very good at Literature and RMPSS, as well as not negging. His consistency is why I placed him around this position at the player poll.
21. Shardul Rao: Shardul and Nedward are both very good at what they do, being getting lots of points in tournaments and doing well on bonuses. I don’t see the three of Shardul, Nedward, and Tegan not being interchangeable in these rankings.
22. Jackson Lee: East Brunswick played split for a large portion of the season, but Jackson was the overwhelming lead scorer both when split and when full. He’s one of the best science players in the game (he 4-0’d noted science fiend Benjamin Hu at one tournament), and his skill propelled East Brunswick to be the third best team in the very strong tristate area.
23. Brian Lin: Brian Lin from Wayzata is a very good player in general and did particularly well alongside Amogh from Wayzata at CALISTO Online (even though they’re both history-based players, both players got around 30 powers which was very impressive).
24. Amogh Kulkarni: This is the Amogh from Arcadia, not the one from Wayzata, though both are excellent players. Amogh from Arcadia excelled at multiple irl tournaments this year (including but not limited to HFT, LOGIC, and BLAST). He and Aadi had nearly the same powers/game on BLAST but his more general coverage than Aadi is why I ranked him above Aadi.
25. Kris Noori: Kris’s performance at MWT (at least on tossups) was very stellar (he beat Justine French to two literature questions in the round against UCLA!) He’s definitely one of the best literature players in the high school scene and even though he lives in a less strong circuit, he still deserves a lot of recognition.
26. Aadi Karthik: Aadi is a very good science player and generalist. Mostly going off BLAST and LOGIC, I would confidently say he and Amogh are on the same tier of being really good players. As said earlier, though, I put him lower based on the fact that Aadi is less generalised than Amogh.
27. Basil Sousounis: Basil’s pretty good at quizbowl even disregarding online results (getting 5.6 powers/game on CALISTO and a bit over 5 on HFT is nothing to slouch at). It seems he’s improved quite a bit between when COVIDtine started and now, but since I’m ranking entirely on stats from games played in real life, his placement dropped a little.
28. Zaid Siddiqui: Zaid seems to have done a massive amount of improvement from when I first played his team at Prison Bowl (where we were able to beat them pretty handily) to HFT, LOGIC, and WAIT/RAFT Online (where his team got some excellent stats). I chose to put him on the list as opposed to his teammates of Daniel and Adam (both of whom are very good players in their own right) mostly due to him being the top scorer on all the aforementioned teams.
29. Andrew Zeng: Andrew is probably the best player on Hunter’s team this season (as seen by his time being the lead scorer on the RAFT and HFT teams). In addition, he even outscored Asher while on the same team as him at the NYU HFT mirror, which is why I ranked him above Asher. Both are very, very good players, and I suspect I’m highly underranking Andrew.
30. William Groger: John John heavily shadows William (his IS-188 stats are alone enough to show that he’s a really formidable player alone). I’m almost certainly under ranking him in this poll (why are there so many good players).

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10)

I'll begin by justifying in order:
Karsten: I hope it's abundantly clear that he's basically the best 10th grader in the country, but if not I direct you to EFT.

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10): He's a very good humanities based generalist as seen time and again at the multiple tournaments where Arcadia has done extremely well (such as Tritons Fall and Winter as well as DNE).

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10): Aadi knows a lot of science things and did pretty well at BLAST and LOGIC, which is why I'm ranking him where he is.

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10): He lead scoring at RAFT and HFT for Hunter A, but at this point in the ballot it's basically splitting hairs between him, Aadi, and Amogh.

Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10): is also very good at quizbowl as seen by his Cal Cup 1 stats, where he was able to lead a team to a respectable finish and also garner 40 powers (albeit on IS-188) in the process. He also did very well at HFT playing alongside Karan.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

weighted specialists vs generalist, obv karsten first, amogh def second, i put orr over aadi because orr is a significantly better specialist and covers a lot less while putting up still like 70-80 points per game, bmb is scary but has lots of holes.

Danny Peelen, Cedar Crest

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Andrew Minagar (Caddo Magnet, 9)

Pareekshith Krishna (Mission San Jose, 9)

Danny Peelen (Cedar Crest, 9)

Ok soooo:
Jacob: He's SUPER strong in history and good at history. I think his MSNCT results show that
Lukas: Same as Jacob, maybe not as strong at history, but stronger in generalism
Andrew: Don't know much about him but his Buzzword lvl B stats ridiculous
Pareksheeth: Good in general, I mean I beat him/her in some buzzword stuff
Me (Danny): Lol idk im greedy, but i mean ive put up some numbers near or better lukas/jacob in buzzword. Although i didn't ms years to build saying ive put up sort of numbers as this with one year i meannnn

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Aadit Juneja (Adlai E. Stevenson, 9)

Lukas Koutsoukos (Wilton, 9)

Owen as #1 seems like a general consensus pick, and he's been doing amazing as with Sam this season. Jacob has put up pretty consistently good stats this season as a specialist and generalist, including a statline of 19/0/5 while playing with Hunter A and nearly 100 ppg and a top-bracket finish as a solo team at Island Cup Online, which demonstrate both specialism and generalisim. Ian has consistently gotten a lot of powers and not many negs as a very solid history specialist who's often on a team with other history specialists but still does very well, in addition to showing strong generalism at HFT at NYU, and has put up very strong stats on Buzzword. Aadit is a top history and FA player who gets lots of points while on strong Stevenson teams with other history good players such as Rishabh. Lukas also continues to be a very solid generalist who can get buzzes wherever, even while playing with his also-strong brother, and has had some strong performances on his own, such as beating Hunter B and coming close to beating High Tech B at HFT at NYU.

Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9)

Bo Chi (East Chapel Hill, 9)

Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt (Hunter, 9)

Pareekshith Krishna (Mission San Jose, 9)

im basing this off of msnct last yr and stuff this year. Owen Farra (St. Louis Patriots, 9) is crazy good, sucks he didnt get to go to msnct last yr. Bo Chi (East Chapel Hill, 9) is a sci god. jacob hb and Ian Lu (Hunter, 9) powered a team to msnct victory, and they shadowed each other a lot but managed to get over 50ppg even tho they had tons of hard playoff games. pareekshith had some sick individual stats at msnct but gets shadowed hard by avinash (who i would put as my #1 if I was making an overall poll). super hard to make this poll too, especially jacob/ian, but i think jacob is a lil better.

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

amogh and aadi are sick. karsten too. it was rly hard for me to rank them but imo amogh has impoved so much soph year + we dont know how much hes improved over corona quarantine so hes up there. also his online stats are crazy. aadi put up 164 ppg over hft playoffs in a tough field. karsten is also amazing, his eft stuff blows me away. andrew has improved so much over the year, i didnt even know who he was last year but now hes amazing. bmb too, from hsnct last year, u cld tell he was good but hes improved so much. these sophs r all so good you could put them in tons of different rankings and they would still make sense.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

1. Karsten is leading one of the best teams this season as a sophomore and has crazy high power counts
2. Amogh is another really strong generalist that can scale really well, with insane power counts and ppg as well
3. When Andrew is on Hunter A(#1 on Groger Ranks), he usually first scorer on that team, which is pretty crazy for a sophomore to lead the top team in the nation. His teammates shadow make his stats deflated, but he’s still really, really good.
4. Aadi has put up very good stats while leading a T30 team which is really impressive. His generalism as well as his specialism are very very good
5. BMB consistently leads ECHHS to really strong performances at tournaments. He is in a slightly weaker region than some of the other players on this list which may inflate his stats a little, but he can power across the distro, and his RMPSS knowledge is especially deep.

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Arthur Delot-Vilain (Georgetown Day, 11)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

I created a rough tiering list when making my ballot. Within the tiers it was very hard to differentiate between the players, so some of my decisions are pretty arbitrary.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Jeez louise this was hard. So hard. Like, insanely so. Many special shoutouts to such insanely talented rising juniors as: Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10), William Orr (Langley, 10), Shiva Oswal (Stanford Online, 10), Justin Chen (Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech, 10), Advaith Modali, Pratyush Janikar, and Ryan Sun (Arcadia, 10), among others, who unfortunately I did not have room to squeeze into my poll. Essentially I came at this from the point-of-view of "who would I most want on my team if I were to create one from scratch and sent it to HSNCT," like a sports draft but for quizbowl. These would be my top 5 picks among sophomores.
Pick 1, Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10), is, like, yeah no kidding Sherlock. Overwhelming leading scorer on #6 ranked Phillips Academy. Despite having another respectably strong humanities generalist (Vincent Fan (Phillips Academy, 12)) on his team, he's still managed to utterly dominate literature (from what I've heard missing only a small handful of lit tu at a regs hs tournament), and maintain remarkable dominance in other humanities. While this is anecdotal, the stats and team ranking back it up (see his EFT and WAIT performances, and then consider that in the several months since then he has likely improved noticeably). I would've expected a very impressive HSNCT performance from him, with maybe 80 ppg and just shy of 4 p/g, like 2018 William Golden.
Pick 2, Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10) (Arcadia) is only controversial to those who have never seen him play. He barely takes a dip going from hs to college regs. In Southern California, we had our only National History Bee and Bowl tournament directed by NHBB director David Madden. After Amogh won the JV bee (he undisputedly could have won the varsity bee if he'd wanted), Madden called his performance "nationals caliber." I believe Amogh would have had a good shot at winning JV NH Bee had it been held. His power numbers are among the best in the nation, which is doubly impressive given that his best category, history, is very competitive in the SoCal circuit, especially considering that half of his games were in top bracket, mostly playing other top 50 teams such as Westview A, Westview B, Del Norte A, Santa Monica A, and Canyon Crest A. This is in addition to the shadow from his consistent teammates Ryan Sun (Arcadia, 10) and Michael Kwok, Ryan being insanely good (coming in second in the NHBB JV Bee to Amogh) in the same categories as Amogh and them still putting up the numbers they do is very impressive for both of them. As if it were not enough that he is the best history player in his region, he is also the second strongest literature player, with incredible scaling ability in that category as well, as anyone who has ever seen him on college level lit bonuses would attest to. His rise during the summer leading up to the season was meteoric, but his current knowledge level dwarfs even the impressive performances from the earlier parts of the year. I could have seen him lead Arcadia to be a sleeper team sneaking into T19 or T12 even at HSNCT. He would get around 70 ppg with around 3 p/g. Like 2019 Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12).
Pick 3, Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10), is also just really good, I sadly know less about his game than I do Karsten or Amogh's, but some of his numbers seem to speak for themselves. From what I can tell and remember, he's a generalist who's best at history, science, and fine arts. I could see a lot of people over or under ranking him due to him playing in a generally less competitive area, which often saw as many teams with sub-10 ppb as teams with 20+ ppb despite having 5 players from each team at a time. He reminds me of 2018 John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12), and I'd expect him to have around 75 ppg, maybe a shade below 3 p/g on a team around the T19 area.
Pick 4, Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10) is an interesting position. He is the best player, at least in terms of consistently putting up the most powers and points, from a school with the highest Groger Rank in the nation. However, due to where his knowledge base is and fits with the rest of his (incredibly capable) teammates, he is not on the traditional "Hunter A" lineup. This should not take away but rather emphasize how strong he is as an individual player, with 40 powers and 60+ ppg at HFT at NYU on a stacked Hunter A team. He's just really good as a generalist, but particularly at literature, FA, and thought, based on what I've seen. His, very lazy, comparison (in terms of strength and position, not really categories) would be 2017 Daniel Ma, with around a T31 level finish, 80 ppg and around 3 p/g.
Pick 5, Kapil Nathan (Hoover, 10) is in a similar boat to Aadi as a strong player in a comparatively weak region, making him similarly difficult to rank. However, I have faith that he would be able to scale to nationals and deal with the tougher competition that would bring, based on just how consistent his stats are, even when I adjusted to count only his games playing teams that have 20+ ppb on regs when I was trying to mitigate the effect the weaker field had on my calculations for these rankings. That said, I can't really seem to pin down what he's best at, seeming to be a pure generalist. He gets a comparison to 2018 Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12), with my guess putting him on a T49 level team with around 80 ppg and around 2.5 p/g.
Again, shoutout to all those amazing players I couldn't mention. Sorry to exclude you, you're all amazing.

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Justin Chen (Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech, 10)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford (East Chapel Hill, 10)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Justin Posner (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Ned Tagtmeier (St. Mark's School of Texas, 11)

Charles Yang (Lexington, 12)

Benjamin Fry (Chicago Christian, 12)

Everyone from like Karan on down is in the same tier here. Super hard to differentiate.

Freddie O'Hara, Scripps Ranch HS

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Jackson Lee (East Brunswick, 12)

Anuraag Kaashyap (Thomas Jefferson Science & Tech, 11)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Deepak Gopalakrishnan (High Tech, 11)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Andrew Zeng (Hunter, 10)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

I'll be doing this like a NFL/NBA draft type thing.
Pick 1, Matt Siff—I've seen enough to know GDS is even better than their great stats show, and that Matt Siff has enough knowledge to shadow anyone else. Having personally played with/against Arthur and Alex (online) I know they are scarily deep specialists, and the fact that Matt has managed to be the primary scorer in almost every category a good part of the time with such strong teammates in such a strong circuit shows how complete and deep he is, being a rare true generalist. Easiest guy to build a team around since he has pretty much no holes to fill.
Pick 2, John John Groger—Another great generalist, he has played in a number of circuits and is very much like Matt in how complete he is in his knowledge. At the very competitive New Trier tournament on Penn Bowl he was the leading scorer by almost 40 ppg on the team that got second against an exceedingly strong filled filled halfway with top 30 teams. I'd want him on my team desperately, with his very low neg play being a definite plus in crucial games.
Pick 3, Dean Ah Now—His history specialism is among the best in the nation as he lead a team at NH Bowl last year to almost bring down the Tegan & Hari-led Beavercreek behemoth in an impressive second place showing. He also has shown dedication to quizbowl studying and no doubt has improved both in history and as a generalist since then. He is the dominant leading scorer on the 2nd Groger ranked team, enough to land him this high on the list.
Pick 4, Karsten Rynearson—He might have the greatest domination of a big 3 category (literature) of anyone on this list, being able to get practically all regs literature tu, often first or second line, and has absolutely no problem scaling up as shown by his EFT stats. He led an already strong team (Phillips) to be ranked 6th in the nation, though he has also had strong teammates to back him up. Picking him to be team leader may give a tiny science hole, but he more than makes up for it with his exceedingly strong humanities generalism, you definitely want him on your team.
Pick 5, Avinash Iyer—A history-based generalist, easily a top 5 history player, and also a top 5 generalist (by my count). He doesn't quite have any category really "on lock" that I know of, has a miniscule bio "hole", and has admitted to not having the stamina often required of top scorers on elite teams at nats (especially PACE). Those, however, are all nitpicks of a great player whose completeness on bonuses (see 18+ solo ppb on EFT) would be pivotal to any team.
Pick 6, Raymond Wang—As you've probably picked up by now I like players who have led or been instrumental core pieces to leading a team to a high rank, while giving bonus points to having a strong side category. Raymond, who is the overwhelming leading scorer of #8 Ithaca. As a notably consistent Lit/FA-based generalist, he would likely prosper at PACE.
Pick 7, Shahar Schwartz—Another great leader of a top team. While understandably best noted for his outstanding literature playing, he is also incredibly strong and consistent on science and AFA, and can surprise you with deep buzzes on history, geography, pop culture, myth, and religion. It should speak to his dominance in literature and science that the rest of Westview A's NAQT lineup is composed entirely of primarily history players. Shahar can be trusted to go toe for toe and get the advantage against other top bracket teams' literature and science players all on his own, and to help out his teammates. His high neg numbers do hurt him a little here, but you'd still much prefer having him on your team to not any day of the week.
Pick 8, Tegan Kapadia—A dominant history-based generalist who gets the overwhelming majority of Beavercreek's points, and it's primarily through his dominance that Beavercreek has managed to not miss a beat this year despite graduating POTY last year Hari Parameswaran. I feel like he gets slept on sometimes, but #5 Beavercreek are where they are primarily because of him stepping up.
Pick 9, Govind Prabhakar—A first tier player who has managed to shadow incredibly gifted teammates and lead his team to a top ranking (#9). He puts up insane power numbers and has made a worthy case for being the top history/geography player in the nation this year, despite his teammate Arjun also being arguably a top 15 history/geography player. He even out-powered all of #2 MVS by himself at New Trier Varsity on Penn Bowl, and was the second scoring player in a stacked field on the team that cleared the field.
Pick 10, Eshaan Vakil—Underrated due to playing primarily in a weak region and bouncing around a lot playing tournaments from PA to MN to beautiful San Diego, California. I got to play one game against him and naturally he dominated the history, but showed impressive generalism. I'd definitely want that consistent generalism with history dominance on my team for nats.
I'm afraid I'm too lazy to really go and do the full writeup for all the rest. Essentially I was looking for the best teams' best players, cause that's where you start to find players that make teams better—at teams that are better. And my descriptions started to feel repetitive. I did try to account for regional bias and those who have less strong/complete teams (such as Kris Noori and Amogh Kulkarni). Let me know if you have any issues with my list that would spark a spirited debate. Sincere apologies to many amazing players who I left off or underanked. Use your spite at being slighted to study, get gooder, and win.

John John Groger (Miami Valley, 12)

Karsten Rynearson (Phillips Academy, 10)

Avinash Iyer (Mission San Jose, 11)

Matthew Siff (Georgetown Day, 12)

Dean Ah Now (Millburn, 12)

Katherine Lei (Montgomery Blair, 12)

Govind Prabhakar (Adlai E. Stevenson, 12)

Karan Gurazada (Stanford Online, 11)

Ethan Ashbrook (University Lab, 12)

Dylan Bowman (University Lab, 12)

Shahar Schwartz (Westview, 12)

Jason Hong (Saratoga, 12)

Kris Noori (Brophy College Prep, 12)

Eshaan Vakil (Ed W. Clark, 12)

Tegan Kapadia (Beavercreek, 11)

Raymond Wang (Ithaca, 12)

Basil Sousounis (Acton-Boxborough, 12)

Sanjeev Uppaluri (Cambridge, 12)

Amogh Kulkarni (Arcadia, 10)

William Groger (Miami Valley, 11)

Arjun Nageswaran (Adlai E. Stevenson, 11)

Aadi Karthik (Lambert, 10)

Shardul Rao (Mounds View, 11)

Abhinav Karthikeyan (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Robert Dedvukaj (Detroit Catholic Central, 12)

Jonathan Lau (University Lab, 11)

Justin Posner (Richard Montgomery, 11)

Pedro Juan Orduz (Hunter, 11)

Robert Condron (Strake Jesuit, 12)

Chinmay Murthy (LASA, 12)

Rough tier list based on stats+feelings