A Tale of Two Academic Teams

Epilogue: Collegiate scoreboard

In the years to follow, the new principal didn't seem as willing to support academic extracurriculars since the principal believed they disproportionately benefited the students at the top. Nevertheless, the core VA debaters still managed to make the "golden age of Venomous Agendas debating" last 3 seasons total, with new players who, unfortunately, suffered from the lack of funding.

Gaston "The Fundraiser" ends up earning his one ToC bid during his season as a senior, at Duke. So for his propensity to push for greater nat-circuit participation, he wasn't the main beneficiary. He mostly ran fundraisers so that the team could get to the ToC. After high school, he attended Tulane under early decision.

Daisy also earns a ToC bid in LD the following season upon reaching the quarterfinals at Columbia, by defeating... DCC (that particular DCC player ends up playing at Nats and she doesn't). She later went to Connecticut College.

Then came the policy players. While, in the past, policy tended not to do so hot in inter-state tournaments, somehow, the VAs won Stanford in policy. However, if Rebecca was hoping to have the debate coach bat for her at Stanford, it was not enough to get her off the waitlist there. Yet, by also being at the final at Isidore Newman, they were playing at the ToC that year, alongside Chantal and the PF pair. They came within one game of breaking at the ToC. At Nats, however, they finished in the top-10 once again. As for college? Rebecca ended up attending Duke off the waitlist, while Jarod was given a debate scholarship to Maryland.

That year, Chantal was much more dominant in extemp than Sadie and Joe were in PF, and the captaincy of the team went back to her after winning at Duke, which she kept for the remainder of her time in high school. She then goes on to win extemp at 4 of the 5 inter-state tournaments the VAs take part in that year, winning Isidore Newman, Columbia and Stanford as well. And, of course, made it to runner-up at ToC (losing to the eventual NSDA Nats domestic extemp champion) and winning international extemp at Nats.

As a mathlete, Chantal, while not scoring that high on the AIME, was still able to contribute to the team at the VMC as well as in the Math Madness playoffs, with the school earning gold at the VMC final once again. Chantal was able to leverage her extemp and, to a lesser extent, mathletic successes into attending Princeton.

But none of the post-Imélie VA quiz bowl successes wouldn't have been possible without Anna. While Anna was the second-highest scorer on both HSNCT squads she was in with Sadie, the second time around, the VAs finished 8th and she proved invaluable in covering what Sadie couldn't. She ended up attending UChicago essentially on the back of her quiz bowl successes.

However, she only managed to play one LD round against Gaston in a fundraiser, in which players were invited to play events they don't usually play. Since Gaston, as a Cong player, dealt a lot with impact calculus (i.e. weighing the impacts of passing or rejecting a bill) in Cong sessions, he was not used to the more abstract argumentation of even traditional LD and, as such, he showed clearly that traditional LD was a poor fit to him; he relied a lot on arguments of pragmatism.

Yet VA quiz bowl would no longer be the same without these dynastic girls. In chronological order these were Marcia, Imélie and then Sadie.

Speaking of Sadie, she managed to get to the top-8 in PF again at Nats, but, at the ToC, finished in octos. And she managed to win only one inter-state tournament, Isidore Newman. Semis at Duke, quarters at Columbia and Stanford. However, this time around, Grapevine didn't traumatize her.

So even though the quiz bowl coach pushed her to apply to an Ivy League school or two, she found them too intensely cutthroat to her, the way Vanderbilt was not, in which case she attended it, and played quiz bowl as a Commodore. As for Joe, he attended Duke under early decision.