Sameer Rai

Sameer Rai
Noted subjects	History
Current college	UC Berkeley (2016-2017)
High school	Bellarmine
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Sameer Rai is a former player for UC Berkeley. He was part of the 2012 Bellarmine team that won HSNCT and also won the 2013 National History Bowl playing by himself.

Career

High school

Even in his freshman year, Sameer was a strong history specialist noted for rarely playing tournaments but doing well at them, winning the JV 2011 National History Bee and getting 2nd at the JV National History Bowl. He also served as fifth scorer on the Bellarmine team that placed 3rd at the 2011 HSNCT.

The next year, Sameer went from 9.87 PP20TUH on 6/3/2 stats at the 2011 HSNCT to getting 77.24 PP20TUH on 90/36/23 stats while leading the winning team at the 2012 HSNCT; both teams had almost the exact same rosters, with Phil Yakushev being their third in 2011. This remarkable improvement can best be seen by looking at Sameer's teammate Nikhil Desai, who went from a 72/61/30 as lead scorer in 2011 to 24/13/5 in 2012 (again, with no change in team). Sameer was the lead scorer on the 2nd place Bellarmine team at the 2012 NSC, which marked an unusual appearance by a Californian team at the tournament - this performance remains the high mark for teams from the state at NSC. Sameer again won the JV National History Bee and helped Bellarmine to 2nd in the varsity Bowl. He was the lead scorer on the winning California team at the 2012 NASAT alongside Bellarmine teammates Nikhil and Ankit Aggarwal and Jonathan Lam.

In 2013, Sameer took Bellarmine to t-8 at HSNCT while playing alongside considerably weaker teammates. That year he also won the 2013 National History Bowl while playing solo, as well as the National History Bee. This was the first time that one school had won both the bee and bowl in the same year (and the only time someone has won the bowl solo), though Bruce Lou would lead Saratoga to both Bee and Bowl titles in 2015 and Hari Parameswaran would do the same in 2019. Sameer was the lead scorer on the 3rd place California team at the 2013 NASAT as well as the lead scorer overall, playing alongside Bryce Hwang, DoWon Kim, and Boyang Jiao.

College

An incredibly rusty Sameer returned from a hiatus in 2017, acting as the second scorer for the Berkeley A team that placed 7th at ICT and 8th (1st undergrad) at ACF Nationals while also negging a lot.