NYU

New York University
Location: New York, NY
Current President or Coach	Rahul Rao-Pothuraju
National championships	None
NAQT Page	link

New York University is a private university in New York City with an active quizbowl program. The team takes part in academic quizbowl tournaments and regularly holds practices and intramural tournaments.

History

NYU has a long history of competition in collegiate quizbowl events. In the 1959-60 season, NYU played four games in the televised rounds of College Bowl, beating Dartmouth College (215-145), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (230-120) and University of Oklahoma (170-150) before losing to Colgate University by 140 points to 95. The four games were broadcast on consecutive weeks (March 20, March 27, April 3 and April 10, 1960).

In the 1969-70 season, they once again qualified for the televised rounds but lost their first and only game to University of Connecticut-Storrs by 345 points to 165. [1]

NYU continued playing College Bowl events until 2002. NYU won College Bowl's Regional Championship (for ACUI Region 3) in 1986-87, 1997-1998 and 2001-2002, and finished third in 1985-1986, 1999-2000 and 2000-2001.[2] By winning the Regional Championship, NYU qualified for the National Championship, finishing 14th in 1997-1998 (with a 2-13 record) and 11th in 2001-2002 (with a 6-9 win-loss record) in the 16 team round-robin championship.[3]

Beginning in the late 1980s, NYU regularly took part in, and hosted, collegiate quizbowl tournament outside the College Bowl circuit. The second issue of Buzzer, a early newsletter for the quizbowl community, notes that NYU participated in a tournament at University of Maryland during the Fall 1987 semester, finishing outside the top four.

The earliest known tournament held at New York University was the NYU Invitational in Fall 1988. The exact date is unknown, but since other tournaments were scheduled for mid-November (Terrapin Invitational at Maryland) and "winter" (Nittany Lions Invitational at Penn State and Wisconsin Invitational at UW-Madison), it is presumed the tournament took place in September, October or early November.

An NYU Invitational was also held in Fall 1989.

In National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) competition, the NYU team won Division II of NAQT Sectionals 2000-2001 held at Boston University and thus qualified for ICT, where they finished 20th in a field of 24 teams. NYU also finished 7th in a field of 11 teams in NAQT Division II SCT in 2006-07, and sixth in a field of 16 teams in Division II SCT in 2008-2009.

NYU won the 2012 NAQT SCT Region 3 (Division II) at Princeton University and thus qualified for ICT. An NYU team comprised of Mirza Ahmed, Jason Lai, Max Stivers, Katrina Van Laan and Michael Zhuang finished runners-up at ICT (Division II), losing the final to Harvard.

An NYU team composed of Mirza Ahmed, Yogest Raut and Douglas Yetman also won the college division of the 2012 Ridgewood Summer Invitational.

In 2013, NYU finished in second place at NAQT SCT (Region 1) at MIT and went on to a ninth-place finish at Division I ICT. In their first appearance at ACF Nationals, NYU finished 18th in a field of 36 teams, in what was to be the last tournament for A team players Yogesh Raut, Jason Lai and Michael Zhuang.

Current Team

• Rahul Rao-Pothuraju
• Arnav Sood
• Harrison Whitaker

Notable Results

• NAQT Sectional Championship Tournament Division I: 2nd place in 2013, 2017, and 2018
• NAQT Sectional Championship Tournament Division II: 1st place in 2001, 2012, and 2014
• NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament Division I: 9th place (out of 32) in 2013, T-11th (out of 36) in 2018
• NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament Division II: 2nd place (out of 32) in 2012.

Notable Former Players

• Yogesh Raut
• Evan Adams
• Aaron Cohen
• Mirza Ahmed
• Jason Lai
• Michael Zhuang
• Max Stivers
• Alec Vulfson
• Sameen Belal
• Harrison Hsu