Chaska
| Chaska | |
| |
|---|---|
| Location: Chaska, MN | |
| Club Presidents | Lucas Igl and Allison Diminnie |
| Coaches | Chris Lenius and Gretchen Oppriecht de Garcia |
| State Championships | KMO: spring 1992, spring 1993, spring 2003 Knowledge Bowl: 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2003, 2009, 2012 MNHSQB League: 1992, 1993, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2009 NAQT State: 2004, 2009 Science Bowl: 2003, 2004, 2006, 2010 |
| National Appearances | AAC: 1993 Knowledge Bowl: 2022-23 HSNCT: 2005, 2007-2019, 2021-22 NAC: 1999-2006 NSC: 2009 TOC: 1995-2003 |
| Program Status | Active |
| School Size | 1,526 |
| NAQT Page | link |
| Website | link |
Chaska High School is a public high school in Chaska, Minnesota. Its quiz bowl team was founded by Jan Baker in the early 1980s and led to prominence by Chris Lenius in the 2000s. The 2006 Chaska team placed second at the 2006 NAC and the 2009 team tied for 7th at the 2009 HSNCT (and also attended the program's only PACE NSC). Chaska's program is extremely old, relative to most (it was founded in 1982), and has been consistently successful, qualifying for and attending some form of national championship in every year since 1993 (except in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of all national tournaments). Many Chaska alumni have gone on to compete for their universities or in open tournaments.
| Chaska roster | |||||||||
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| Upperclassmen
Seniors (Class of 2024)
Juniors (Class of 2025)
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Underclassmen
Sophomores (Class of 2026)
Freshmen (Class of 2027)
Other Players
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Coach/President
Assistants
Other Notable People
Key (C) Captain (A) Alternate Captain | |||||||
Program History
Chaska High School's quiz bowl team was founded in 1982 by language arts teacher Jan Baker, who had seen Knowledge Bowl in northern Minnesota and wanted to bring it to the Twin Cities metro area. Baker remained the coach for the program's first few decades, when it competed mostly in Knowledge Bowl and the early forms of the Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl League. Much of the history of the program from its founding until the 1990s has been lost to history, but it is believed that Chaska competed and steadily improved throughout the 1980s. In 1992, the program broke through, sweeping that year's quiz bowl league, Knowledge Master Open (KMO), and Knowledge Bowl State Meet.
The rest of the 1990s saw continued success for the program, which won a total of ten state championships between Knowledge Bowl, quiz bowl, and KMO from 1992 to 2000. The 1993 Chaska team burst onto the national scene and finished second at that year's American Academic Challenge. That team also performed the notable feat of placing both first and second at the Minnesota State Knowledge Bowl Meet, the only time this has ever been accomplished to date.
With the turn of the century came the beginning of the NAQT era, which had a tremendous impact on the Chaska program. Founder and longtime coach Jan Baker retired in 2002 after a twenty year run with the team. She was succeeded by former player Chris Lenius, who was a member of the 1995 state championship squad and returned to Chaska High School as a teacher after graduating college. Lenius propelled the program to further heights, sweeping the KB and QB state titles again in 2003 and contending in other years.
The program reached a climax in 2006, when the top team, consisting of Rob Carson, Andrew Hart, Andrew Guyton, and Jon Martin, won a state championship and placed second at the 2006 NAC. However, that team chose not to attend HSNCT, making them the only Chaska team from 2004 to 2020 not to attend. Carson, Hart, and Guyton went on to play quiz bowl in college, where Carson and Hart won the 2011 ICT with the University of Minnesota in addition to collecting undergraduate titles in 2009 and 2010. Chaska continued to be highly competitive in the late 2000s and peaked again in 2009, Sam Peterson's senior year, when they tied for 7th at HSNCT, the program's highest finish ever there.
The Chaska program suffered multiple setbacks around 2010. First came the departure of Coach Lenius, who accepted a position as the head of District 112's Gifted and Talented program. Second, Chanhassen High School opened as an in-district rival, and several rising stars in the Chaska program (most notably Austin Wilder) transferred to Chanhassen as the school district's attendance boundaries changed. Those two events marked the end of Chaska's "glory years," although the program continued to compete at the state level for much of the 2010s under new coach Jennifer Stone. Notable accomplishments during this time period include winning Run for the Roses in 2011 and 2012, as well as consistent top-10 finishes at many other tournaments. The team slowly began to fade around 2014, in no small part due to the emergence of Minnesota powerhouses like Wayzata and Eden Prairie.
Chris Lenius returned to Chaska for the 2015-2016 season, just in time for the junior and senior years of Coby Oertel and Sean Zipse. The 2016-17 year in particular was quite successful, with the team finishing in the top ten at every tournament they attended and qualifying two teams for HSNCT for the first time since 2013. Lenius stayed as coach for another year before retiring from coaching in the summer of 2018 to spend more time with his family. He was succeeded by fellow science teacher Tucker Besel. After a few down years during the transition, Chaska returned to prominence in 2020 by tying for sixth in the Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl League, then followed it up by placing third in the state in Knowledge Bowl in both 2021 and 2022. Chaska finished 4-4 at the 2021 HSNCT, the program's best record there since 2016. The 2021-22 team, the first since 2015 to consist entirely of players not recruited by Coach Lenius, attended Knowledge Bowl Nationals for the first time in school history, where they placed 6th.
The program suffered from coaching turnover in 2022, with both Coach Besel and his assistant (and temporary successor), Naomi Jones, departing the school (and the teaching profession) over the summer. They were replaced by former player Rory Bartels, who promptly led the 2022-23 squad to a runner-up finish at KB Nationals, equaling the 1993 and 2006 squads for Chaska's best nationals performance. Bartels then also resigned, and Lenius unretired to take the reigns of the program for the third time starting in fall 2023.
Top Players
Following is a list of some of the top players in Chaska history. This list was created with emphasis on both accomplishments while playing for Chaska as well as accomplishments elsewhere in players' careers, and players are listed in no particular order.
- Sam Peterson - Sam is statistically the greatest player in Chaska history. His career records for practically every statistic are nearly unbeatable, and he led the team to its best "good quizbowl" national finish. Sam went on to play for Harvard, and will always have a place among the top historical high school players in Minnesota.
- Rob Carson - Rob's high school career was during very beginnings of the Minnesota high school circuit, so very few records of him playing for Chaska exist. However, he was the driving force behind the 2006 Chaska team that was among the best in school history. Rob's biggest achievements came in college with the University of Minnesota, where he won the 2011 ICT, and in open tournaments since then. He is still active in the quiz bowl community and is, among other things, the current chief administrator of the Hsquizbowl.org forums.
- Andrew Hart - As with Rob, Andrew's high school statistics are very incomplete, but he was an important piece of the 2006 Chaska squad. With the University of Minnesota, he won the 2009 and 2010 Underclassmen ICTs, as well as the 2011 ICT with Rob. Andrew was the University of Minnesota's career points leader until Shan Kothari surpassed him in 2020, and he is now NAQT's Director of Writer Development.
- Jeffrey Lyman - Jeffrey is second-place all-time for Chaska to Sam Peterson in points per game, and third to Sam and Reilly Melville in points, powers, and tossups converted. His career spanned the years immediately following Sam's graduation, which were a period of great success for Chaska, and he was the leading scorer on the 2012 team, which remains the most recent Chaska squad to win a playoff game at HSNCT.
- Jacob "Coby" Oertel - Another standard-bearer for Chaska, Coby was one of the best players on very good mid-2010s teams that competed locally but never got over the hump nationally. He sits fourth in Chaska history in tossups converted and career points.
- Emily Goldberg - Along with Mark Meier, she led the 2013 Chaska team to a third-place finish in the 2012-13 MNHSQBL. Emily sits third in Chaska history in tossups heard, fifth in games played, career points, and tossups converted, and seventh in powers. She is also unquestionably the best female player in modern Chaska history.
- Sean Zipse - The second head of the two-headed monster that was the class of 2017, Zipse started his career slowly but grew to become sometimes spectacular, including a pair of 25-power performances at the 2016 and 2017 iterations of the Run for the Roses. Sean is fourth in Chaska history in both powers and negs.
- Mark Meier - Along with Emily Goldberg, Mark contributed heavily to the very good 2013 team. He was also involved with a Knowledge Bowl event to raise money for cancer research, which was started after then-Chaska player Tommy Costello was diagnosed with cancer. Mark is first in Chaska history in tossups heard and games played, fifth in powers, and sixth in tossups converted and career points.
- Andrew Guyton - Andrew played during the mid-2000s, so he only competed in five tournaments with recorded statistics during his high school career. However, he was pretty darn good when he did play, performing solidly on the 2006 team alongside Rob Carson and Andrew Hart. Andrew went on to play for Macalester College, where he was among the better players in that program's history.
- Tim Youker - Tim graduated in 2000, so his playing career was sadly undocumented, with one notable exception. During the 2000 NAC, Chip Beall claimed to have lost one of the lightning rounds for a match between Chaska and St. John's (TX). After a delay, Beall "found" the missing category of "Italian Opera," which Youker swept to lead Chaska to a comeback victory. It was later discovered that Youker had described himself as a music aficionado in his introductory bio, leading to speculation that Beall had deliberately rigged the lightning round because he wanted to see Youker, the tournament MVP, progress to play another top generalist, Jonathan Hess. Tim went on to attend Stanford and appear on Jeopardy!.
Chaska alumni
There are several noted Chaska alumni in the quiz bowl community that aren't mentioned above, including:
- Meredith Johnson - University of Minnesota
- Jon Martin - University of Minnesota
- Quentin Roper - Drake
- Sean Skaar - University of Minnesota
Chaska tournaments
In 2007, Chaska hosted a mirror of the Titanomachy tournament, which was attended by several teams on the Saturday before ACF Fall. Drake, consisting of Brendan Byrne, won the tournament over a Minnesota team featuring Rob Carson and Gautam Kandlikar.
In January 2017, Chaska started the Metro West Conference Quiz Bowl Championship. They hosted it again in 2018, with St. Louis Park taking over the tournament in 2019 after the retirement of Coach Lenius.
The Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl League ran an outreach tournament for Knowledge Bowl teams at Chaska in February 2020. After playing in the tournament, Northfield's Owen Riley did further research on quiz bowl, discovered the online quiz bowl community, and successfully founded Northfield's quiz bowl program.
The 2021 and 2022 iterations of RAT-RACE were held at Chaska.
In addition to the quiz bowl tournaments listed above, Chaska has a long history of hosting Knowledge Bowl events, including Cosmic Bowl, the Jan Baker Invitational (named after the former coach), and various metro regular season and playoff meets.
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