2021 Academic Bowl National Champions
Our 2020-2021 Academic Bowl season was one for the ages and will be long remembered in the annals of CSD history. After coming up short last year with a second-place finish at the Nationals, our team returned all four players: Naomi Brock, Courtney Bronson, Donovan Holmes, and Chang-May Tan, and successfully brought home the National Championship for the first time since 1999. While CSD had been an early Academic Bowl powerhouse, winning the second and third National Academic Bowl championships in 1998 and 1999, we had not won at the big dance since repeating 22 years ago.
This year’s Academic Bowl season began with the inaugural Gallaudet Trivia Cup last fall where over a hundred students competed individually against each other weekly answering knowledge-based questions within specific categories. The Trivia Cup categories were Entertainment, Geography, Science & Technology, Mathematics, Language and Literature, U.S Government and the 2020 Election, and Sports. Our players excelled in these Trivia Cup competitions and senior, Donovan Holmes, won the overall Trivia Cup championship while sophomore Chang-May Tan placed third. Moreover, seniors Naomi Brock and Courtney Bronson placed 7th and 10th. No other school in the country did nearly as well as CSD in the Trivia Cup and amazingly, our entire Academic Bowl team placed in the top ten nationwide!
In addition to the Trivia Cup, our students participated in the independent Western Academic Bowl League (WABL) where they played Academic Bowl matches against nine other schools in the western United States. Our team went undefeated in the WABL and beat the New Mexico School for the Deaf 82-55 to win our second WABL championship in three years.
Our success in the Trivia Cup and WABL positioned us for another run at the National Academic Bowl Championship. In the West Region Academic Bowl tournament last March, our Eagles secured the #1 seed and then went on to beat Downey High School 75-5, the Oregon School for the Deaf 87-21, and the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind 79-40. In the Championship match against our rival school, the California School for the Deaf at Riverside, we won by 31 points, beating the Cubs 93-62 to repeat as West Region Champions. While we were thrilled to win the west again, our ultimate goal of winning the Nationals was never far from our minds.
The Academic Bowl Nationals began April 19th with a ranking test for all 20 participating schools in order to determine the tournament seeding. Our Eagles once again secured the #1 seed as well as an Opening Round bye. Our first match was against St. Mary’s School for the Deaf in Buffalo, New York in the Round of 16. The Nationals followed the new online match format: gone were the buzzers and our players worked together to answer questions as a team as well as bonus questions in the first round, then they answered individually in the second, and once more as a team in the third round. We beat St. Mary’s 80-37 and had the highest match score of the day.
CSD advanced to the quarterfinals (Round of 8) where we played against the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf who finished second in the Central Region tournament. Our Eagles soared to victory, winning 83-66 and once again had the highest match score of the day. In the semifinals, we played against the East Region champions, the Marie Philip School from Framingham, Massachusetts. Our team again had the highest match score and won 92-66 to advance to the Championship match.
In the Championship match, we once more faced our rival and sister-school, the California School for the Deaf at Riverside. The Battle of California had gone national and the whole country would be watching to see which California school would be crowned National Academic Bowl Champions. The Riverside Cubs were eager to avenge their loss in the West Region Championship match, and two years earlier, they placed second at the Nationals. The two California schools, both the 2020 and 2019 Nationals second-place finishers, were matched up for the biggest prize of all.
The match was livestreamed on the Gallaudet Youth Programs’ Facebook page and is still available for viewing. While both teams played the match separately with the Gallaudet officers, Gallaudet edited the videos to make it look as if we played each other in real-time. In the first round, the two schools started out neck-to-neck and the score was tied 14-14 at the end of the 7th question. However, starting with the 8th question, which was a math question, the Eagles began to show their superior knowledge as well as teamwork, and started pulling ahead. The Eagles finished the first round with a comfortable 14-point lead and were up 46-32 going into the second round.
In the second round, where individual players took turns answering questions, we showed why we were not only the strongest but also deepest team in the tournament. We answered an incredible 12 out of the 20 second round questions correctly while Riverside answered 6 correctly. The Eagles led the Cubs by a nearly insurmountable 24 points at the end of the second round with a score of 70-44. In the third round, teams once again worked together to answer the final 15 questions. Our Eagles answered 10 out of the 15 questions correctly while the Cubs got 8 out of 15. The final score was 100 to 68 and CSD broke through the 99-point barrier and scored the most points ever in a Nationals match!
Following our championship victory, Gallaudet awarded CSD the Sportsmanship award based on our excellent teamwork and positive rapport during matches. Moreover, sophomore Chang-May Tan was named a Nationals All-Star and senior Donovan Holmes was named Most Outstanding Player of the Nationals tournament. The Gallaudet Youth Programs Specialist who facilitated the awards ceremony mentioned that the Academic Bowl Executive Committee had never before seen a team with four very strong players. She explained how amazing it was to see all four players writing the same correct answers for different questions.
In the post-match interview, the coaches as well as players commented on the beautiful teamwork and how each of the four players brought an incredible amount of knowledge to the matches. Following our second-place finish last year, the players were super motivated to win this year and put in hours of hard work preparing for their matches. This preparation and commitment showed in their teamwork, high match scores, and in the West Region competition where for the first time in Academic Bowl history, all four players on a team won individual awards—All Stars Naomi Brock, Courtney Bronson, Chang-May Tan, and Most Outstanding Player, Donovan Holmes.
CSD and their coaches, Allison Gibbons and Andrew Phillips, are incredibly proud of our players and their historic accomplishment. We will dearly miss our three graduating seniors: Naomi Brock, Courtney Bronson, and Donovan Holmes, and wish them our best and know they will continue making CSD proud. We look forward to next year with Chang-May Tan and the upcoming players who will carry on the legacy. It was truly a special season and now it belongs to the history books.
Match videos, scores, and pictures are available at: www.facebook.com/GUYouthPrograms/
