Hinsdale Central
| Hinsdale Central Red Devils | |
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|---|---|
| Location: Hinsdale, Illinois | |
| Coaches | Alan McCloud |
| State Championships | 1992 IHSA |
| Program Status | Unknown |
| School Size | Unknown |
| NAQT Page | link |
Hinsdale Central High School is a public high school in Hinsdale, Illinois, near Chicago. It competes in Class AA, the "large school" division, of the Illinois High School Association's (IHSA) State Championship Series.
The team was coached by Donna Watkins throughout the 1990s and for a few additional years. Under her, the team won the 1992 IHSA State Championship and finished 2nd in 1998 and 2002. The team has never entered a large number of invitationals--most of its matches are played within the West Suburban Conference.
Current (2013-2014) Players
Sopomores (2016)
Juniors (2015)
History
While the school has had a string of conference, sectional, and regional titles since its state championship in 1992, Hinsdale Central has not played a major role in the Illinois Scholastic Bowl scene in a while.
During the 2012-2013 school year, Hinsdale Central Varsity had many of its juniors on Varsity from the previous year return, boding for a strong season with many experienced players. Meanwhile, it recruited and retained for most of the year almost a dozen freshmen--all of them guys. These freshmen, along with about 3 or 4 sophomores who stayed on JV as captains, were very bright and covered a broad range of subjects.
On Varsity, the starting 4 seniors were Sagar Dommaraju, Max Rong, Gideon Ticho and Alex Newkirk, with senior Nina Tandle and sophomore Miguel Molina backing them up. They ended up breezing through West Suburban Conference play, going 11-1 with a close 290-270 loss to only Oak Park River Forest in December, their 8th game. They ended the season as the outright conference champion, forgoing the conference tournament due to both scheduling and weather problems.
On Junior Varsity, there were many freshmen vying for playing time. The players who remained for the entire year were Rohith Balusu, Jack Mueller, Sunny Chen, Ankush Bajaj, Andrew Coyner, James Zhou, BJ Ryan, Hugo Zoells, and Ben Anderson. Of the more noteworthy plaers, Jack specialized in History/Geography, Sunny was a generalist who excelled at Science, Ankush specialized in science, Andrew specialized in History, James was a generalist with no actual focus, BJ specialized in Geography, and Hugo specialized in Music and Literature. In general, three or four freshmen would play at a time, and switch out every 8 or 16 questions, with 1 or 2 sophomore captains in at all times to guide and manage them. Being all boys, this team was very immature and rowdy, often getting in trouble and making messes, though they were much more talented than their conference rivals. They coasted to a 12-0 undefeated record in conference play, almost always with very wide margins of victory. Apparently it was the first undefeated West Suburban JV team in about a decade. Throughout the season, the JV players that were believed to show the most promise and given the most recognition were Ankush Bajaj and Sunny Chen, who played a few games for Varsity on an easy day. Sunny was the superior one out of all of the freshmen, and ended up helping Varsity later in the season.
During the season, the Hinsdale Central teams went to only one tournament, Loyburn, hosted by Rochford Auburn and Loyola Academy on December 15, 2012, entering an A and a B team, Varsity and JV respectively. The Varsity roster was the same as normal, though JV was missing its sophomore captains and some freshmen. While conference play was easy, both teams struggled at this tournament, showing just how weak the West Suburban Conference and both Hinsdale teams were in comparison to some of the better teams in the state. Both teams went 1-4 in the morning round, though the A team was placed in the second (out of three) playoff bracket and the B team was placed in the third. In the playoffs, Hinsdale A went 5-2, and Hinsdale B went 4-3. The top Varsity player was Max Rong, who ended up in 24th place with 37.73 ppg over 11 games, while the top JV players were Sunny Chen, 32nd with 31.43 ppg over 7 games, and Andrew Coyner, 37th with 26.67 ppg. Andrew's limited playing time was due to an argument between him and Sunny, which he protested by sitting out. The A team finished 6-5 for the day, while the B team finished 4-7.
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