Chris Chiego

Chris Chiego
Noted subjects	History, Geography, the US Civil War
Current college	Penn (2014-Present)
Past colleges	UCSD (2009-2013) Georgia (2005-2009)
High school	White Station High (Memphis, TN)
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Chris Chiego is a notable player and former team president and treasurer at Georgia, former player/tournament director at UCSD, and former coach of Germantown High in West Tennessee. He briefly played for Penn and was a member of their 2015 ACF Nationals-winning team.

High School Experience

Chris excelled at the 3 local pyramidal tournaments he played in high school, but his school chose to concentrate on the local TV tournament, which once negged him for answering with "centrifuges" instead of "devices for making nuclear material." This led to a life-long desire to change bad quizbowl into good quizbowl across the country.

College Playing Experience

Georgia

While at Georgia, he helped lead a rise in Georgia's quizbowl fortunes, culminating in the highest-ever finishes for a UGA team at a nationals (9th in DII at 2005 ICT, 15th overall at the 2009 ICT) as well as the most number of teams fielded (six at the 2007 ACF Fall Southeast mirror). He was best known in particular for running ruthlessly efficient tournaments.

UCSD

At UCSD, Chris teamed with Auroni Gupta and other UCSDers to help lead UCSD's 9th-place nationals finish at the 2010 ACF Nationals and 2012 ICT.

Penn

Chris started a PhD in Political Science at Penn in 2014. He helped Eric Mukherjee, Saajid Moyen and Patrick Liao win the 2015 ACF Nationals. He has since retired.

High School Coaching Experience

For the 2013-2014 year, Chris coached Germantown High School's quizbowl team while teaching world geography. Two Germantown teams qualified for and attended the 2014 HSNCT. He also worked with his alma mater of White Station to host more pyramidal tournaments and start a middle school quizbowl team and circuit in the region.

Tournament Directing and Outreach

Chris has directed over 20 tournaments from Georgia to San Diego to Tennessee to Philadelphia and served as a moderator at dozens of others. He is the author of the Tournament Hosting Guide on SoCalQuizbowl.org.

His efforts to increase outreach to local high schools and get more teams active in SoCal led to his 2013 Cooper Award.

He has continued to push for increased outreach in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia specifically (including the Greater Philadelphia Quiz Bowl website) and at the national level across high school quizbowl. Thanks to his efforts and those of local coaches, there is now a Philadelphia City-Wide Championship that is now in its fourth year.

Other

• Liveblogged the 2009 HSNCT, which ended up getting a mention on Deadspin [1], as well as the 2010 HSNCT. See this site for links to the liveblog.
• Was once asked in an interview, "So what is this...quizbowl... thing?"
• Is the only person to have won the Cooper Award (with Dwight Wynne for his work in SoCal) before winning an ACF Nationals title (Jeff Hoppes has also won both).

Benjamin Cooper Academic Ambassador Award
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
Linda Greene & David Riley	2013 (with Dwight Wynne)	Jeff Hoppes