In its attempt to defend its national title from last year, the varsity A History Bowl team went to Washington, D.C., from April 22-24 and placed 14th out of 168 teams at the National History Bee and Bowl tournament.

The varsity A team swept through its international History Bowl preliminary rounds with an undefeated 10-0 record but faltered in the playoffs, winning one round and losing two.

The other Saratoga History Bowl teams also struggled  during the tournament with the JV A team placing 24th, the JV B team placing 95th, and the varsity B team placing 58th.

In individual events, captain junior Mason Tian reached quarterfinals in the History Bee and U.S. History Bee, and junior George Wang reached quarterfinals in the U.S. Geography Bee.

Last year, the team gained its victor led by Bruce Lou, the nation’s top competitor. After Lou and the other alumni graduated last year, the varsity A team went into rebuilding mode.

All three current captains, Tian, junior Bryant Chang and senior Daniel Eem along with senior Nathan Ney competed on the varsity A team for the first time this year.

Although the team did not reach  finals, the students were still pleased with the results and considered their performance a kind of victory.

“Considering that three-fourths of our A team graduated last year, and we lost the best player in the history of our school, and we still managed to stay within the top 16, [our results] were definitely a victory for the program,” Tian said.

The History Bowl rounds took place from April 23-24 with 10 preliminary rounds and three playoff rounds taking place on the 23rd and two JV final rounds and three varsity final rounds taking place the next day.

The top 24 varsity teams and the top 16 JV  teams from the upper bracket moved onto the playoff rounds.

The varsity A team and the JV A team — composed of freshman Kiran Rachamallu, freshman Anson Tong, freshman Manit Sripadam, sophomore Kyle Wang and sophomore Tiffany Huang — both made the upper bracket with an undefeated score in their first five preliminary rounds. The JV A team two of its five following rounds, while the varsity A team won its next five rounds, securing a spot in the playoffs.

Unfortunately, the varsity A team was defeated in the playoffs rounds, because new, more in-depth questions strayed away from older problems, which the team had been practicing and studying.

“A lot of us in the  team were  [practicing with] packets from previous years, but that’s not going to work anymore because it’s outdated information,” Chang said. “Now we need to be actively studying, reading more books and going on Wikipedia pages.”