December Accolades

We are sharing Student Accolades from:

It's Academic >>

Quizbowl >>

Debate >>

Publication >>
 

It's Academic

Congratulations to our GDS team, Henry Fragale ’26, Ben Hellman ’25, and Haughton Neppl ’27, who swept the competition (Parkdale, St. Stephens and St. Agnes) on It’s Academic on December 7!

Watch the video!

Quizbowl 

On Saturday, November 16, the GDS Quizbowl high school team composed of Nadia Bandy ’27, Alec Donath ’26, Henry Fragale ’27, Ben Hellman ’25, and Haughton Neppl ’27 finished second out of 11 teams in the Georgetown University Fall Tournament. Individually, Ben finished third and Haughton finished fourth out of 46 students. The second-place tournament finish brought the team’s ranking up to 24th in the country based on the Groger Ranks, the premier website ranking high school Quizbowl teams.  

The next day, eight GDS middle schoolers competed at the Burleigh Manor Middle School Invitational Tournament in Ellicott City. Out of 48 teams, GDS’s A Team, including Max Badel ’31, Nate Feldman ’30, Hugo Gonen ’32, and Ezra Saunders ’29, took fifth place, and GDS’s B ’31, and Caleb Simon-Ratner ’31, finished in twelfth place. Individually, Ezra finished third, and Paul finished sixth out of 211 students.

On December 14, sixteen GDS Quizbowlers from 4th-7th grades competed at the Katherine Johnson Middle School Winter Quizbowl Invitational. Out of 24 teams, GDS’s A team, including Paul Bloch-Prime ’31, Jake Teitelbaum ’30, Nate Feldman ’30, Cadel Behbahani ’31, Caleb Simon-Ratner ’31, and Oliver Elleithee ’31 finished 8th overall. Individually, Paul was the 3rd overall individual scorer in the preliminary rounds out of 110 students! 

Our younger students played most of their matches against 8th grade teams and rose to the challenge. GDS’s C team, including Elliot Myers ’33, Sanjay Ramiah ’33, Josh Fuzesi ’33, Henry Moon ’33, and Finn Horwitz ’33 placed 15th, and GDS’s B team including Hugo Gonen ’32, Samyuktha Narayan ’32, Edith Jordan ’32, Avi Rockmore-Saurkar ’33, and Logan Shaw ’33 placed 16th.

Congratulations GDS Quizbowlers!

Debate

Juniors Emma Renigar '26  and Sam Wood '26 qualified to the tournament of champions, the end of year national championship! Sophomores Ananth Mangalam '27 and Joseph Xu '27 went 5-1 in the preliminaries and participated in the octafinals (top 16) round. Our novices, freshman Elspeth Patten '28 and Avery Fragle '28 went 5-0 in the preliminaries and made it all the way to the finals in their first tournament!

Congratulations to all! 

Publication

Congratulations to Ella Schneider '26 on publishing her first full-color comic book, a 56-page story called The Sunken Ether, and to Zoya Mghenyi '26, who assisted with the coloring on several pages.

The Sunken Ether