Greenhill US Quiz Bowl Teams Claim Third, Fourth

This past weekend, two Greenhill US Quiz Bowl teams competed at the St. Mark’s School of Texas Invitational. The Greenhill A team finished fourth in the varsity division, and the Greenhill B team took third in the novice division.

 

Greenhill A – Nikky Nandipati ’24, Kate Ponnambalam ’26, and Iyad Mohammed ’24 (joined by Aaron Kuang ’26 in the afternoon) – went 8-3 and finished fourth, with losses only to the three teams placing ahead of them (one via tiebreak): Houston Kinkaid (on the last question of the match, and after Greenhill A had made a stirring rally), Houston Strake Jesuit A, and eventual champions St. Mark’s A. Despite this tournament only having 12 teams, there was a ridiculous amount of firepower in play: Kinkaid finished fourth in the nation last year in the Open division, Strake Jesuit A finished seventh, and St. Mark’s won the 2022 national title in the Small Schools Division. 

 

Individually, Nikky finished in third place, averaging about 3.5 tossups, 3.5 “power” tossups (where the player receives a bonus for answering correctly very early in the question), and less than 0.5 penalty buzzes – for a total of 81 points per game. Kate finished eighth at 49 PPG and was the top-scoring ninth grader in the entire Varsity field.

 

For their efforts, Greenhill A qualified for the PACE National Scholastic Championship tournament – and already had qualified for High School Nationals through NAQT.

 

Greenhill B – Ahmed Agha ’23, Ayan Thombre ’26, Pratosh Raman ’26, and Hasan Makhani ’26 – was seeded fourth in the single-elimination playoff after going 4-3 in the preliminary rounds. They gutted out a tough win against St. Mark’s D before advancing to play the undefeated Shreveport (LA) Caddo Magnet B. Greenhill B was down 150 points, but Caddo gave back some points and Greenhill B got some buzzes to eventually tie the match at the end of regulation. In the anything-goes tiebreaker, Caddo rang in early to get the question and the win. Caddo went on to win the title.

 

In the third-place match against the Strake Jesuit C team that had beaten Greenhill B on the final tossup in their round-robin match, things were no less close. Greenhill B took a 5-point lead with two questions left, and somehow the final two tossups both went dead, so Greenhill B won the third-place trophy after a 10-point protest was denied.

 

Ahmed finished fourth among all scorers with 39.5 PPG.