Varun Wadhwa

Varun is a current player and captain of the team at The Charter School of Wilmington.

Early Years

From a young age, Varun Wadhwa had a strong natural gift for geography. His love of the subject led to him claiming school titles in 6th through 8th grade for the geography bee and being runner up for the school title in 4th and 5th grade. Varun took the state championship in the geography bee as a 6th and 7th grader and came in second in his 8th grade year. It was also during these middle school years that Varun discovered quiz bowl through the local tournament - Charter Challenge. After being crushed by future teammate at Wilmington Charter Grace Kim at the tournament, Varun quit quiz bowl and vowed to never play again claiming, "why would I take part in a competition with so few geography questions?"

High School Years

High School: Pre-Quiz Bowl

It was during a pick-up basketball game that a fateful meeting occurred. Varun met Naman Agrawal (at the time a specialist in all questions related to rap and not a science player yet). Naman instantly realized the potential Varun had and the difference he could make on Charter's D team which was then captained by Agrawal himself. Naman told Varun that he must join the team if he lost to Naman in a one-on-one match. In a desperate game to avoid returning to the activity he so loathed, Varun fought with all his might, but the years of donuts and soda caught up to him and he lost. It was then that he was forced to make his return.

High School: Freshmen Year

Varun quickly established himself as the team's number one geography player, soon becoming the top scorer on the D team with 28 ppg. Despite this, he was never able to crack the C team rotation and remained a low-level player.

High School: Sophomore Year

At the beginning of his sophomore year, Varun's talent in geography and sports was noticed by team captain Ravi Suba who placed Varun on A team for several NAQT tournaments to give the A team a boost in those categories. Later in the year, Varun started to build a formidable knowledge in history as well and learned enough literature to score on mid-level teams. This sudden rise in skill led to a 3rd place finish at the National History Bowl for in the JV division for Charter's team, which was captained by Varun (who scored 90% of the points). Around the same time, he began to build a B team to complement his skills and selected Naman Agrawal to learn science, Shrayus Sortur to learn literature, and Mohan Malhotra to learn Fine Arts and RMP. This team would go on to play many tournaments together and would lead to the following year's Charter B, led by Sortur and Malhotra, to play with great skill and confidence due to Varun's awe-inspiring mentoring abilities. This team ended up going 5-5 at NAQT HSNCT and missing the playoffs just barely. Wadhwa vowed to return an even stronger player the following year.

High School: Junior Year

Junior year marked a complete change in Varun's abilities as teammate Jaimie Carlson and him became one of the most fearsome duos in the east. As the year progressed so did his playing skill eventually leading to his becoming the top scorer on the team at NAQT HSNCT. His abilities in history reached new heights and he began to expand to many other subjects. A 9th place finish for Charter at PACE NSC and an 8-2 prelim record at HSNCT were the highlights of a fantastic year for him.

High School: Senior Year

Despite losing partners in crime Jaimie Carlson and Naman Agrawal, Varun remains optimistic about the team's future and works extremely hard to train his teammates and bring out their talent. His unselfishness was highlighted at a tournament at Princeton where he chose to play on B team to let four of his teammates who still needed time to improve without being stuck in his shadow the opportunity to play on A team.

Fun Trivia about Varun

-He founded DEQBA with Naman Agarwal, Mohan Malhotra, and Vineet Thakur in order to conduct outreach to middle schools in Delaware. The organization was an overwhelming success, with the Charter Challenge MS field reaching 54 teams.

-He has gone a weight loss campaign since the end of Junior year by quitting junk food and soda. He has lost 30 pounds so far.

-He prefers to be called Supreme Leader of Charter QuBo by the freshmen and Sorcerer Supreme of Buzzing Abilities by the sophomores.

-In his free time, Varun can be found volunteering or tutoring (for free) underclassmen in history and geography.