One-person teams

A one-person team (or one-man team) is a team with multiple players on it whose fate is perceived to be entirely tied to the scoring abilities of a single player. Literal "one-person" teams are typically referred to as solo instead.

The term is both laudatory and derisive - while it celebrates the skill of the "one-person" in question, it minimizes the contributions of their teammates (which are often significant) and carries with it the implication that the "one-person" is succeeding in part because of their lack of support. Because of the derogatory connotations, and especially the implied insult to the teammates of the "one-person," it is not a good idea to use this term in reference to any team in your tournament when you are the TD or moderator.

Examples

One-person teams are frequently successful at the local high school level and occasionally competitive nationally. They are vulnerable against well-balanced attacks from multiple good players at the highest levels of either high school or collegiate quizbowl, which frequently limits their placement.

High school

This table is a subset of teams which could be considered "one-player" since 2010, under the loose definition of "a single player with prelim PPG is 80% or more of a team's tossup points per game". Entry on this list has been limited to teams that fit this criteria while placing in the top 20 at either HSNCT or NSC.

School	Players	HSNCT	NSC
2010 Alpharetta	Nandhini Sundaresan, Kunal Naik, Gautam Narula, William Horton		16th
2010 Detroit Country Day	Michael Dimattia, Neil Gurram, John Bernabei, Chris Schulte, Aamod Dekhne, Kevin Tan, Hannah Cheriyan	7th
2010 Georgetown Day A	Casey Ebner, Matthew Jackson, Oliver Hudson, Daniel Branch-Neufeld, Alex Jiang	5th	5th
2010 St. Anselm's	Jacob, Brendan, Aidan, Matt Bollinger		4th
2010 St. Ignatius	Jake O'Shea, Amy Brabec, Brian Kenny, Vincent Kenny, Andrew Deveau, Michelle Yuen	43th	15th
2010 Torrey Pines A	Chris Wu, Sharad Vikram, Howon Lee, Stephen Liu		7th
2010 Walt Whitman	Alex Luta, Douglas Graebner, Oren Steinberg, Jeremy Steinberg, Todd Pollak, Alex Rosen		13th
2011 Alpharetta	Nandhini Sundaresan, Kunal Naik, Gautam Narula, William Horton		13th
2011 Centennial	Katherine Cannella, Nikhil Vallabhaneni, Adam Silverman, Jenny C. (?)	5th
2011 Copley	Jeffrey Wang, Saajid Moyen, Edward Pang, Keval Yerigeri	13th
2011 Stevenson	Eugene Bulkin, Mark Savin, Kevin Malis, Zach Blumenfeld, Joe Schlude, Collin Shapiro		4th
2011 St. Anselm	Patrick Merkle, Aidan Mehigan, Brendan Ziebarth, Jacob Wasserman		19th
2011 St. Ignatius	Vicky Del Real, Amy Brabec, John Lotus, Josh Mei, DePaul Ohiri, Andrew Deveau		8th
2012 Carbondale A	Michael Steele, Natalie San, Prerak Trivedi, Ben Chametzky		5th
2012 Centennial	Chris Olsen, Claire Garland, Will June, Tyler Knoblett, Adam Silverman, Rick Sheahan, Arun Doogar, Nikhil Vallabhaneni, Elliot Campos	102th	3rd
2012 New Trier	Anne McLaughlin, Michael Goldman, Andrew Wang, Ying Han		18th
2012 St. Anselm's Abbey School	Aidan Mehigan, Jacob Wasserman		12th
2012 Warren G. Harding	Michael Coates, Joseph Angelo, Sam Eartly, Korey Gall	33th	19th
2013 Belvidere North A	Conor Reilley, Emily Carrick, Patrick Moore, Dylan Minarik	13th	19th
2013 Ladue	Ben Zhang, Haohang Xu, Max Schindler, Jialin Ding		1st
2013 Northmont	Johnathan Yagisawa, Helena (?), Sam Blizzard, Tori Amos, Meghan Jenkins, Hao Tran, Erin Laing	21th	19th
2013 Thomas Jefferson A	Raynor Kuang, Luke Waddell, Nadege Aoki, Sid Verma		7th
2014 Northmont	Helena Jenkins, Meghan Jenkins, Sam Blizzard, Kara Combs		7th
2014 St. Joseph	Dan Blackburn, Jack Mehr, Justin Lin, Greg Burton		19th
2014 Western Albemarle	Patrick Andrews, Sam Lesemenn, Tim Dodson, Kelly Missett, Eric Xu, Sam Lesemann, Angela Li, Caroline Koester	8th	2nd
2015 Northmont	Lauren Papp, Rachel Tracy, Sam Blizzard, Brendon Jenkins, Kara Combs	13th	12th
2015 Rancho Bernardo	Omar El-Sabrout, HoWon Choo, Kion You, Bryan Ugaz		19th
2015 Western Albemarle	Muhannah Hossain, Tim Dodson, Kelly Missett, Eric Xu, Sam Lesemann, Jackson Collins, Caroline Koester	5th	5th
2016 Rancho Bernardo	Omar El-Sabrout, Kion You, Howon Choo, Bryan Ugaz		15th
2016 Rockford Auburn	Ethan Strombeck, Cole Timmerwilke, Henry Roe		8th
2016 Westview	Grace Tran, Jennie Wang, Shivank Nayak, Rahul Keyal, Jonathan Tran, Anish Sathe, Kevin Yu, Jordan Lei	53rd	14th
2017 Dublin Scioto High School	Clark Smith, Gabriel Pinto, Sanjay Medicherla, Eddy Liu, Enoch Fu		6th
2017 La Jolla	Shane Pauker, James Malouf, Jennifer Andrey, Sam Kaseff		8th
2017 Lehigh Valley	Lucas Larkin, Jonathan Skee, Alex Schmidt, Ramon Torres	15th
2017 Naperville North	Jacob Fisher, Shawn Yoshida, Emily Hou, Kelvin Li, Jason Hu, Jakob Myers	3rd	9th
2018 Battle Ground	Cameron Clark, Max Dambach, Henry Dambach, Jack Lewis	32nd	16th
2018 Beavercreek	Abby Cohen, Ziyi Zuo, Hari Parameswaran, David Cohen	5th	8th
2018 Crystal Springs Uplands	Partha Rao, Alice Jiang, Justin French, Darren Jian	12th	7th
2018 Downingtown STEM	Anish Gadgil, Vishwa Shanmugam, Max Lind, Rohan Vora		18th
2018 Dublin Scioto	Gabriel Pinto, Clark Smith, Visvam Srinivasan, Edward Liu		2nd
2018 Lehigh Valley	Nathaniel Schmidt, Alex Schmidt	12th	21st
2018 Miami Valley	William Groger, John John Groger	20th	34th
2019 Beavercreek	Abby Cohen, Tiffany Zhou, Hari Parameswaran, Tegan Kapadia	1st	7th
2019 James E. Taylor	William Golden, Jed Wang, Katie Sturzu, Mitchell Shadden	5th	2nd
2019 Georgetown Day	Avani Ahuja, Matthew Siff, Arthur Delot-Vilain, Nathaniel Rosenberg, Alex Moon	31st	17th
2019 Rockford Auburn	Ethan Strombeck, Justin Abel, Leif Verace, Lilly Chávez	8th	6th
2021 Lambert	Anish Kayarthodi, Aadi Karthik, Justin Kim, Vishal Sareddy, Arjun Birthi, Adi Krish	19th	9th