User:Graham Dunwoodie/Sandbox

Graham Dunwoodie
Noted subjects	Math, U.S. History
Current college	Chicago
High school	Walnut Hills
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Graham Dunwoodie is a former player for Walnut Hills and Chicago.

Playing career

Dunwoodie began his playing career in Brain Bowl as a member of the Hyde Park Eagles. After making the team in fifth grade via tryouts, Dunwoodie was impressive enough in his first game that head coach Christo Lassiter decided to pit him solo against full lineups of four in one practice. Unfortunately, he lost to the fourth-grade girls, foreshadowing his future dating success. Dunwoodie's Eagles would go an unbeaten 6-0 in their first regular season, earning them the top seed in the district tournament. However, after a loss to Fairview in the winner's bracket, Lassiter decided to greatly tighten his roster rotation, limiting his lineups to just five total players, including Dunwoodie, for five straight hour-long matches. This practice was banned shortly thereafter due to an undue amount of strain on the players. Nevertheless, Hyde Park made it to a disadvantaged final, but fell to Fairview by one point after winning the first game of the final. The Eagles were able to win the district tournament the next year, Dunwoodie's last year of eligibility, without losing a game. Dunwoodie reportedly asked if winning the district tournament meant they could advance to a higher level, but since nobody knew what MSNCT was at the time, his question went unanswered.

Dunwoodie enrolled at the brand-new Spencer Center for seventh and eighth grade, but they did not have a quizbowl team beyond Brain Bowl, which he was no longer eligible to play in. He attempted to become an assistant coach for the team, who placed third in the league in their first year in existence. While at the district tournament, Dunwoodie witnessed Walnut Hills junior Nolan Brown moderating a match, which made him realize that quizbowl beyond Brain Bowl did in fact exist. The following year, an arrangement was made for Dunwoodie to join the Walnut Hills team for practices despite not being enrolled, although per ECC conference rules he was not allowed to appear in a match, JV or otherwise, and Walnut did not have a middle school team at the time.

Dunwoodie transferred to Walnut Hills for his freshman year of high school, joining the team in an official capacity. In his first junior varsity match against Loveland, Dunwoodie was part of Walnut's OAC lightning round team; although the Eagles lost by one point, Dunwoodie was over the moon at having correctly answered a question about Pokémon, the only trivia subject he was competent in at the time. Dunwoodie did not attend any NAQT tournaments in his first two years, while attending the occasional OAC tournament when a junior varsity division was available. In his sophomore year, Dunwoodie bounced back and forth between JV and varsity, but generally performed poorly at the varsity level whenever called upon. On one occasion, after a rough tournament, he stooped so low as to ask Ron Maupin, the head coach at rival Little Miami, for study tips.

Dunwoodie took on a more prominent role in his junior year after a strong offseason. He was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the OAC's shift to bad quizbowl in the regular season, using his fast reflexes to make up for a shallower depth of knowledge compared to other prominent players in Ohio. Dunwoodie became a fixture of Walnut's lightning round lineups, cementing himself by scoring 20 of Walnut's 38 lightning round points in a two-game set against conference champion Little Miami. He also attended his first NAQT tournament, headlining Walnut's B team as a top-ten individual player in the tournament at Rowdy Raider in December 2021. The B team failed to make it out of prelims thanks to a tough division, but the A team clinched an HSNCT bid with their performance. At Dunwoodie's first and only nationals appearance in May 2022, he failed to correctly answer a single question on Day 2 and negged once as part of Walnut's collapse in a winner-take-all game against Dunbar, scoring the lowest of Walnut's four attendees at 12.69 PP20.

Dunwoodie was affected in his senior year by the unexpected loss of his mother in November. In conference play, he continued to lead Walnut in lightning rounds, but his neg rate increased somewhat, most notably in the first game of the season against Turpin in which he had four negs to four correct answers in a 66-60 loss. Nonetheless, Dunwoodie showed up against Little Miami for the second straight year, scoring 22 of Walnut's 40 lightning round points in a two-game sweep which secured Walnut a share of the ECC title for the first time in three years. Dunwoodie won the ECC Player of the Year award, with his performance in said match a big reason why. On the NAQT front, Dunwoodie missed two of Walnut's three tournaments on the year, one for his mother's funeral and another due to a day trip to watch Ohio State football, which had been scheduled months in advance. The only NAQT tournament Dunwoodie was able to attend was the state championship, at which the Eagles failed to reach a qualifying placement, finishing 7th of 22, and as a result missed out on qualifying for HSNCT altogether.

Upon his high school graduation, Dunwoodie enrolled at the University of Chicago, and attempted to test the waters of playing collegiate quizbowl despite his unfavorable skillset. His first tournament was an NAQT Collegiate Novice event in October 2023, during which he and his teammate confused the names of the divisions (which were libraries on campus) with the locations of the games, and so delayed the tournament by ten minutes. Nonetheless, Dunwoodie placed tenth in the 44-person field while on UChicago's 3rd-place A team, though his two worst games were both losses in the playoffs. Dunwoodie's second and final collegiate tournament came a month later at ACF Winter, where he mustered just 10 PP20 in the four games before lunch as a member of UChicago's D team before abruptly leaving. His last known sighting at a quizbowl tournament was as a moderator for ACRONYM in May 2024.

Trivia

• Dunwoodie works as a sports broadcaster for UChicago; he cites question-reading in Walnut Hills practices as well as Brain Bowl moderation as inspirations.
• Dunwoodie took a quizbowl teammate to senior prom. He is rumored to have left her corsage in the refrigerator at home, causing his father to drive back and get it for him.