Here are your top 25 quiz bowl teams entering the 2015-16 season. Best of luck to all teams this year, and keep watching this site for updates on the rankings.
25. Bishop Guertin High School, Nashua, New Hampshire – first time in the preseason rankings; 106th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
24. Cave Spring High School, Roanoke, Virginia – first time in the preseason rankings; 110th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
23. Darien High School, Darien, Connecticut – first time in the preseason rankings; 95th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
22. Dublin Scioto High School, Dublin, Ohio – first time in the preseason rankings; 103rd in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
21. Chattahoochee High School, Johns Creek, Georgia – second time in the preseason rankings (14th in 2013); 11th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
20. Detroit Catholic Central High School, Novi, Michigan – fourth time in the preseason rankings (15th in 2010, 7th in 2012, 6th in 2014); 1st in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
19. Davis Senior High Schoool, Davis, California – first time in the preseason rankings; 27th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
18. David Henry Hickman High School, Columbia, Missouri – first time in the preseason rankings; 89th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
17. Ithaca High School, Ithaca, New York – first time in the preseason rankings; 76th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
16. The Early College at Guilford, Greensboro, North Carolina – first time in the preseason rankings; 23rd in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
15. Canyon Crest Academy, San Diego, California – first time in the preseason rankings; 45th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
14. Singapore American School, Singapore, the Republic of Singapore – first time in the preseason rankings; 64th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
13. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Virginia – fourth time in the preseason rankings (9th in 2010, 20th in 2011, 43rd in 2014); 65th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
12. Hannibal High School, Hannibal, Missouri – first time in the preseason rankings; 79th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
11. Charter School of Wilmington, Wilmington, Delaware – third time in the preseason rankings (21st in 2013, 13th in 2014); 26th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
10. High Technology High School, Lincroft, New Jersey – second time in the preseason rankings (3rd in 2013); 12th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
9. Barrington High School, Barrington, Illinois – first time in the preseason rankings; 57th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
8. Rancho Bernardo High School, San Diego, California – first time in the preseason rankings; 49th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
7. Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School, Marlborough, Massachusetts – first time in the preseason rankings; 56th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
6. Liberal Arts and Science Academy, Austin, Texas – sixth time in the preseason rankings (2nd in 2010, 6th in 2011, 2nd in 2012, 1st in 2013, 1st in 2014); 4th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
5. Paul M. Dorman High School, Roebuck, South Carolina – sixth time in the preseason rankings (7th in 2010, 12th in 2011, 3rd in 2012, 6th in 2013, 20th in 2014); 43rd in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
4. Bethlehem Central High School, Delmar, New York – second time in the preseason rankings (40th in 2014); 34th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
3. Lexington High School, Lexington, Massachusetts – first time in the preseason rankings; 31st in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
2. Hinsdale Central High School, Hinsdale, Illinois – second time in the preseason rankings (24th in 2014); 33rd in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
1. Solon High School, Solon, Ohio – first time in the preseason rankings; 10th in the 2015 pre-nationals rankings
HSQBRank 
I expected Chattahoochee to be higher after what their freshmen and sophomore team did at PACE. Also, no love for Haarlem, Maggie Walker, Naperville North, or Auburn huh?
Maggie Walker loses their top two scorers from last year. I considered Naperville but have concerns about their 2-4 spots. Auburn lost their #1 from last year.
Early College does lose their whole A team, but they return their whole #87 pre-nationals team.
Chattahoochee’s in the top 25. I’m okay with where they are.
I don’t understand that logic. Auburn and MW graduate their top players and that drops them (despite retaining Cole and Will respectively) but Early College graduates their entire team and remains? Some of the top teams on here didn’t even trophy at either nationals and a few went to neither. Some also had poor performances at nationals and were beaten badly by second and third tier teams regularly. To include Hannibal (12) and Lexington (3) but not Auburn, MW, or IMSA (who have Pranav, a player who lead a top 100 team with mild support his freshmen year) off doesn’t add up to me. Your entitled to your opinion but this doesn’t seem rational.
Early College is ranked on the strength of their B team from last season.
I based teams’ rankings off their best regular season performance. This is in part because I didn’t do difficulty adjustments for the nationals, and in part because I don’t believe one bad performance at nationals should outweigh other performances the rest of the year.
Also, isn’t Early College graduating their entire starting roster?
Man oh man. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Auburn isn’t a top 10 team? They might lose three key players, but they return Illinois’ best player by far, as well as a solid, if unproven, backup core. Cole Timmerwilke is a two time NASAT Team Illinois member. He was on the All-World Second team this past year. He won ScoBowl Solo, over the likes of Evan Pandya, Andrew Salij, Adam Fine, Alston Boyd, and the whole Hindsdale team. He almost single handedly beat the 2015 PACE champions DCC at ACF Fall in 2014. Don’t count this man out before the season has even begun. That’s just fufu.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Please don’t rashly crown “Illinois’ best player by far” before the season has even begun.
Thanks
Let’s be honest, you are a top flight player and I believe your team should be on here, but seeing as Cole was te second best player in the state last year and the other top 5-6 are all graduating, it’s a safe assumption to say he’s the best player in the state as of now. Maybe you or some HC people of Matthew or Pranav step up and overtake him but for now it’s his spot too lose
For some reason I am inclined to believe that this was an impostor comment too because I have yet to see Naperville North be active in any forum/online activities. If you are the real Jakob Myers, you are a fantastic player (and not fun to play against), but Cole Timmerwilke is indisputably the best player in Illinois. But on the bright side you have one more year to play and improve than does Cole.
4th? After such a terrible performance at HSNCT?
Why Barrington at #9 and no IMSA? IMSA loses Andrew, Dan, and Waleed, but also returns half of last year’s A team, as well as our X-factor lit player Mike Etzkorn. Unless I am missing something, Barrington is essentially a one-man team (Matthew Lehmann) with some support. I also outscored Matthew when we played together at Barrington during middle school and in 9th grade.
And also, Paul, agreed about Auburn. We’ll have to see how much else Cole and his teammates can pick up.
Barrington brings back their whole A team from last year, which my system likes. IMSA graduated three very good players, as you mentioned.
How exactly does the ranking algorithm work? I was surprised that LASA and DCC were not ranked higher.
I take the team’s best regular season aPPB performance, prorate it by individual PPG and find out who’s returning. Basically, if 95% of your individual scoring is returning from your best tournament, you get credit for 95% of that aPPB. I add in half of the returning aPPB of your B team, as long as it doesn’t exceed your original A team aPPB. I also eyeball it some and do a little bit.
It’s ad hoc as hell, but in the past the top 25 have almost always ended the year in the top 100 pre-nationals. I’m very aware of the limitations – it almost systematically underrates DCC, since they always seem to graduate half of their players and I have no idea how well they’ll mesh together the next year.
Using this method, how was Lasa A ranked first preseason last year then if all our A team members graduated? I mean come on, we should at least be in the top 5.
Because your B team all returned and were awesome.
You said that you also did a little eyeballing; do you really think that Dorman will be better than both us and DCC? That is ridiculous at the least and outrageous at the most.
Thank you for the motivation, Corin.
In case people forgot, the way you really get to be #1 is winning the most games at HSNCT or PACE. This is just for fun (and fundraising)!
Come see me at TI to get blasted @corinwagen
Hey everyone, let’s all calm down a bit. These are just preseason rankings and while some rankings may be controversial, teams who feel under-ranked should stop complaining and work harder to outdo their rank. If your team didn’t make the rankings, guess what, there will probably be many more rankings later in the year based on statistics, so work hard and get good stats at tournaments during the year. In the end, final national placement is what we as players care about; rankings are just a tool by which we compare ourselves with other teams around the nation and shouldn’t be something to get outraged over. We should appreciate the fact that there is someone willing to even generate these rankings in the first place rather than attack him based on our own opinions. I think we should all thank Mr. Morlan for the time and effort he put in even through multiple computer issues.
Everyone read this: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17651#p307720
Nevertheless, this year’s field is drastically different from last year’s; I am excited to see how this year turns out!
Everyone –
Corin did not make the comments attributed to him on this thread earlier today, and he posted a message to this effect in on the forums as soon as we found out about these comments. Fred is aware of the situation, and is working to address it. Shub, Mohan (if indeed you are the authors of your respective posts), you both know Corin through TQBA camp and numerous competitions, and you know it is completely out of character for him to behave in this manner. Also, I would never tolerate this type of behavior from a member of my program.
If anyone has any questions or would like to PM me about this issue, please do so through the forums.
Jason Flowers
Quiz Bowl Coach
The Liberal Arts and Science Academy
Austin, TX
While I’ve never had the chance to interact with Corin, this did seem off when he posted (especially after the advice you gave me about forums/internet posting at TQBA camp). I can indeed confirm that I am the author of my post. Is there any way to IP trace the imposter and figure out who it is? It may be the same person who impersonated Luke Tierney in one of the previous hsqbrank articles (he was quite upset about this imposter and talked to me about how it may be affecting others’ perception of him). I hope this matter is resolved soon.
I will add that the comments attributed to Shub Mehta and myself were posted under false pretenses.
Dorman has nothing but respect for all teams that play quizbowl, and we wish everyone a successful year. I offer my thanks to Fred for his continued efforts on the hsqbrank project.
Geoffrey Thomas
Head Coach, Dorman HS
It appears that my comments have caused a bit of a negative vibe. I’d like to apologize for overreacting. I am still regularly in contact with several Barrington team members and wish them all the best this year!
Hey fred 🙂 thanks for the rankings.
I’m glad you’ve included more socal teams in the rankings, but I think you might be overlooking la Jolla high school.
The two important returning members are james maflouf and Vincent doehr ( Vincent being the top scorer). Here’s a team with no graduates early last year for example-
Vincent Doehr (11), Klarissa Hollander (11), James Malouf (10), Haoran Guo (10), Sabrina Duong (9) on GSAC – 114/22, 21.25 aPPB
And here’s one without Vincent(again, the top scorer) at the end of last year
James Malouf (10), Sabrina Duong (9) on SCT DII – 39/100/8, 21.34 aPPB
Given that they’ve already proven their ability on teams with the graduating seniors (erica and I, who by the end of the year were just specialists) and without us, I think they definitely deserve to be looked at again. The socal predictions have them as the top team in socal to start (without my input), but regardless of whether that’s true they’re still definitely at the same caliber as rb or cca.
Thanks!
Hi former Chattahoochee guy here
I would like to express my intense anger at my alma mater being only ranked twenty-first
It really bothers me that they aren’t placed at top one, which is the ranking I strongly believe they deserve
I know they are top one because I know the people who play there and from knowing them I know they are top one
It’s disgusting to see such teams like “Liberal Arts and Science Academy” and “Rancho Bernardo High School” be rated higher without cold hard evidence
Please reconsider your fraudulent rankings, I find it embarrassing that the community constantly has to deal with such baseless speculation and slander of poor, innocent high-schoolers on a regular basis
Peace
Another impersonator?