Welcome to the website of the Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance (NCQBA)!
The NCQBA is a coalition of coaches, teachers, and students dedicated to promoting quiz bowl among middle schools, high schools, and colleges in northern California. We believe that interscholastic academic competition both reinforces lessons from the classroom and encourages students to explore new areas of knowledge.
If your school would like to know more about quiz bowl and how to play tournaments, visit the introductory pages “What is Quiz Bowl?”, “Resources”, and “Tournament Calendar.” If your school would like to host a tournament, please read the Tournament Hosting Guide and e-mail jeff.hoppes@gmail.com to get your tournament certified by the NCQBA. Note that we may not certify the tournament based on conflicts with existing certified tournaments as well as non-compliance with the standards laid out in the Tournament Certification Program.
Members consist of people who have taken a lead role in hosting one or more good quiz bowl tournaments approved by the NCQBA and possess voting powers outlined in the charter. Officers have administrative power within the organization also delineated in the charter.
Members
Jeff Hoppes (President) helped lead UC Berkeley’s quiz bowl team to the 2003 ACF Nationals, 2004 NAQT ICT, and 2006 NAQT ICT titles. Jeff is now Vice President for Communication at National Academic Quiz Tournaments. He and his wife Larissa live in Richmond.
Ankit Aggarwal (Vice President) is a former co-President of the UC Berkeley club. He is a co-founder of the California Cup series along with Tanay Kothari. With Nikhil Desai, he was previously captain of a Bellarmine team that captured the 2012 HSNCT title, 2012 NSC runner-up, and competed on the 2012 California NASAT championship team.
Tanay Kothari (Vice President of Finances) is a former co-President of the UC Berkeley club. He is a co-founder of the California Cup series along with Ankit Aggarwal. He previously captained for Bellarmine College Prep (San Jose).
Nicholas Karas (Vice President and Secretary) is a former member of the UC Berkeley club and is currently based in Atlanta. He previously served as the Vice President of Outreach at PACE and worked for NAQT doing outreach and marketing. He continues to conduct outreach work in California and Georgia.
Nikhil Desai is a member of the Stanford quizbowl team and formerly played for Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. As a student at Bellarmine with Tanay and Ankit, Nkhil competed at national tournaments (such as the NAQT HSNCT, PACE NSC, and HSAPQ NASAT) and experienced the wider world of quizbowl. Nikhil looks forward to working with the NCQBA to make this upcoming year exciting and event-filled.
Chris Chiego
Eric Chen
Chris Fleitas
Jonchee Kao
Aseem Keyal
Rahul Keyal
Bruce Lou
Shahar Schwartz
Rahul Venkteswaran
Kevin Ye
Former Members
Hidehiro Anto
Austin Brownlow played quizbowl for Stanford where he received a master’s degree in electrical engineering. He is a 2014 graduate of the University of Louisville.
Varun Govil
Sandy Huang played quizbowl for Stanford. Before coming to the Bay Area, he attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Kentucky where he acted as tournament director and contributed to various tournament sets. Sandy likes quizbowl’s educational value in its use of extrinsic rewards (getting points and winning games/tournaments) for the development of intrinsic interest in a variety of academic subjects.
Eddie Kim
Jerry Li
Joey Montoya
Benji Nguyen first played quizbowl for the Liberal Arts and Science Academy (LASA) in Austin, Texas. While in high school, he was a part of four top 3 national finishes and played on the 2011 NASAT championship team. At Stanford, he he played on the team that won the NAQT Division II ICT championship in 2013. He is also a member of the Texas Quiz Bowl Alliance.
Sunil Pedapudi
Niki Peters
Nathan Weiser
Francis Yang
Cody Zeng is the co-founder and was the co-president for the quiz bowl club at Dougherty Valley, coordinating frequently with NCQBA member Sui Feng Xu in order to promote quiz bowl to both his school and other schools. He has attended the 2014 and 2015 NAQT HSNCT tournament.
Christopher Zheng