University of Illinois Lab
| University of Illinois Laboratory High School | |
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|---|---|
| Location: Urbana, IL | |
| Club Presidents | Tim Cho |
| Coaches | Chris Butler, Brad McLain, UIUC ABT |
| State Championships | 2015 IHSA (A) 2018 NAQT 2018 Masonic (AA) |
| National Appearances | MSNCT: 2018 HSNCT: 2014, 2015, 2018 SSNCT: 2018 NSC: 2016, 2017 |
| Program Status | Active |
| School Size | 325 students, 20-25 on A, B, and C Teams |
| NAQT Page | link |
Not to be confused with Normal University High School or University of Chicago Laboratory School
University of Illinois Laboratory High School, or "Uni", is a university-funded lab school on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana. It includes a composite year for 7th and 8th grades alongside the standard four years of high school. As a result, Uni's quiz bowl program includes both a middle school team and a high school team. Uni's quiz bowl teams are directly affiliated with the University of Illinois Academic Buzzer Team, with the latter often providing staff for high school tournaments that Uni attends or hosts.
The Early Years (2012-2015)
The Uni High Scholastic Bowl team first entered the local quiz bowl circuit in 2012 and has since expanded to include a B team and a C team, with about 20 active members on all teams. The team is coached by history teacher John Butler and Brad McLain of the University of Illinois. Although the school is known "Uni High" throughout the Champaign-Urbana area, teams from other parts of the state tend to refer to it as "Uni Lab", "Urbana U-High", or "University Lab School". People from other parts of the country often confuse it for the University of Chicago Lab School at national championships.
Uni A made its debut at an unspecified tournament, where they only scored -5 points against IMSA (which scored over 500) in round 1. At the 2013 NAQT State Championship, they placed 30th, but qualified for the 2014 and 2015 HSNCTs due to other victories, failing to make playoffs both times. In 2015, Uni won the Class A IHSA State Championship after a narrow victory against Peoria Christian. To this day, the quiz bowl team is the only IHSA activity in Uni ever to take the first-place trophy, besides girls cross country. However, Uni was not a top team at the state level overall among schools of all sizes, performing poorly at many tournaments with Chicago-area teams in its first three years of existence as a club.
Into the Big Leagues (2016-2017)
Because of the IHSA's controversial success factor policies, Uni was moved up to class AA because it is a selective-admissions and non-bounded school, despite having only 320 students. However, the influx of strong players such as Tim Cho, Ethan Ashbrook, and Dylan Bowman laid the foundations for a bright future. In its first appearance in the IHSA State AA Finals in 2016, Uni went 1-2 and thus did not qualify for playoffs. The team placed second at the 2017 class AA IHSA tournament, losing to IMSA 500-320 in the championship round after beating Carbondale, Auburn, and OPRF. At the NAQT State Championships, Uni placed 11th in 2016 and 9th in 2017. Despite this, Uni managed to become the runner-up at Masonic for both years, primarily because all the better teams were placed in Class AAA and Uni was placed in class AA. Even though Uni's performance started to improve, top teams in Illinois still saw them as a regional power rather than a state contender, and the team almost never showed up on national polls and rankings.
Breakthrough Year (2018)
Beginnings
Fall of 2017 saw the influx of over ten freshman, several of which played quizbowl at their middle schools. The addition of freshman Jonathan Lau to the A Team resulted in a near-complete coverage of the entire canon, as he filled in many of Tim and Dylan's holes in history and science, respectively. As Uni A began a long string of first-place wins with the IHSSBCA Kickoff at Mattoon, the team gradually began to make a breakthrough onto the national scene. Before long, Uni was universally recognized as a state contender by most top quiz bowl players and teams in Illinois. However, its geographic isolation from the other top teams and lack of administrative funding and support meant that Uni A rarely had the opportunity to play teams better than them.
Success at NAQT State
In 2018, a team comprised of Tim Cho, Ethan Ashbrook, Dylan Bowman, and Jonathan Lau won the NAQT Illinois State Championship by narrowly defeating Auburn in an advantaged final 350-320, finishing out the tournament with a 12-1 record. Uni became the very first school from Downstate Illinois to win the event. With only about 320 students, it also became the smallest ever school to win a large school or open division tournament in Illinois. While defending champion, Stevenson, was not present because of poor weather and icy conditions, Uni also became the first team to win the championship with all four starters posting over 20 PP20TUH for the tournament.
Masonic Victory and IHSA misfortune
The following month, Uni clinched a first-place win over Latin in the Masonic tournament, which was its very first Masonic Win. Uni then entered the IHSA State Series the next week. Because of gerrymandering to separate the top four seeds, Uni A was forced to travel roughly 100 miles north to Streator, where they breezed through the regional. At sectionals, which was just 20 minutes away, Uni cleared the field after a close shave with regional powerhouse Mahomet-Seymour.
At the IHSA State AA Championship, Uni was placed in the same pool as Stevenson and IMSA due to unfortunate luck with seeding. Uni fought hard against IMSA, evening out the score with just five questions to go. However, their hopes were crushed by IMSA sweeping the last five tossups. After beating Macomb, Uni faced off against Stevenson, and was soundly defeated 570-270. As a result, they did even qualify for the fourth-place game, ending the team's hope of claiming the triple crown of Illinois state championships.
National Failures
At SSNCT, Uni placed 5th in the open division after a lackluster performance and low power counts against Friends Select A and Latin A. 2018 also marked Uni's very first appearance in the HSNCT Playoffs. Due to a seeding mishap, they were forced to play against Lexington in the very first round. Although Jonathan Lau powered the first tossup, that proved to be Uni's only power of the entire game, as the much stronger Lexington team easily defeated Uni 400-240. In the losers' bracket, Uni faced off against Carnegie Vanguard, which coincidentally was also a stronger team. Negging and lost buzzer races by Uni A eventually brough Uni's HSNCT playoff run to an end, resulting in an unfortunate 51st place finish. Due to financial constraints and a lack of support from administration, Uni was unable to attend PACE NSC or NHBB Nationals.
Individual Recognition
However, despite all the misfortune, 2018 marked the first appearance on the class AA All-State First Team (Tim Cho), as well as the first appearance on a NASAT team (Ethan Ashbrook on Illinois B). Tim Cho, Ethan Ashbrook, and Jonathan Lau were also selected for the local All-Sectional, again asserting Uni's position as the dominant Illinois team south of Chicago.
Current Status
A Rough Start
On September 29th, 2018, Uni placed second at the Illinois Earlybird. Junior Ethan Ashbrook impressed with his stunning performance and high power count due to the distribution of literature questions. Dylan Bowman also performed well with the Fine Arts and Science questions. However, Jonathan Lau performed very poorly compared to the previous year, putting up low power counts and PPG, because of the low geography distribution and the lack of a specialist ability other than in geography. Tim Cho also had a less outstanding performance than usual, despite a high power count on history and less competition from Jonathan for history buzzes. Back-to-back losses against IMSA resulted in a runner-up finish, although Uni A did manage to beat Stevenson A for the very first time.
Earlybird was not only a bad tournament for Jonathan and Tim: it was also a bad day for Uni B and C. Due to a variety of reasons and a heavy homework load, most of the C and D Teams did not show up, resulting in Uni having to move players up from lower teams. For the entire C Team with the exception of Arav Jagroop, Earlybird was their first-ever tournament. Uni C ended up going 1-9, pulling off one win against Monticello A. Uni B perhaps had even worse luck. Because of losses to Glenbard North A (due to Uni B's history player being absent) and a loss to Latin B, Uni B finished out the day by clearing the field in Consolation II.
| University Lab roster | |||||||||
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| Upperclassmen
Seniors (Class of 2019)
Juniors (Class of 2020)
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Underclassmen
Sophomores (Class of 2021)
Freshmen (Class of 2022)
Other Players
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Coach/President
Assistants
Other Notable People
Key (C) Captain (A) Alternate Captain | |||||||
Notable Tournament Performances
2015 IHSA State Champions, Class A
2017 IHSA State Runner-Up, Class AA (moved from Class A in 2016)
2017 Barron Robinson Memorial Champions
2017 Masonic State Runner-Up, Class AA
2017 Inaugural South Central Solo: 2nd place, 3rd place, 5th place
2018 IHSSBCA Kickoff at Mattoon Champions
2018 Piasa Bird Invitational Champions
2018 Barron Robinson Memorial Champions
2018 NAQT Illinois State Champions
2018 Masonic State Champions, Class AA
National Performances
2014 HSNCT: 211th/272
2015 HSNCT: 145th/272
2016 NSC: 62nd/96
2017 NSC: 51st/96
2018 SSNCT Open Division: 5th/64
2018 HSNCT: T51st/352
2018 NASAT: 13th (Ethan Ashbrook of Illinois B)
External Links
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