November Accolades

We are sharing Student Accolades from:

Quizbowl, QB4ALL >>

Quiz Olympiad >>

Debate >>

Quizbowl, QB4ALL

GDS hosted the Quizbowl for All ("QB4ALL") GDS Elementary & Middle School Icy November Invitational ("GEMINI") for the first time in early November. This 42-team tournament was organized and largely run by GDS high schoolers for the GDS LMS students as well as some 200 students from the DMV and beyond. 

Highlights:
The GDS A team, which included Ezra Saunders ’29, Jake Teitelbaum ’30, Nate Feldman ’30, Paul Block-Prime ’31, and Cadel Behbahani ’31, finished second out of 42 teams! By finishing in the top 15%, they qualified for the Middle School National Championship Tournament (MSNCT) in Chicago in May. 

The GDS B team: Max Badel ’31, Oliver Elleithee ’31, Jason Saferstein ’31, and Caleb Simon-Ratner ’31, finished second in the 6th-grade-and-under division.

The GDS C team: Hugo Gonan ’32, Nora Hanlon ’32, Isabelle Lui ’31, Owen Moon ’31, and Aanika Parker ’31, the GDS D team: Lulit Gerbe ’32, Zoe Hurst ’32, Edith Jordan ’32, Samyuktha Narayan ’32, and Mia Sierra-Price ’32, and the GDS E team: Miriam Berlin ’33, Henry Moon ’33, Elliot Myers ’33, Sanjay Ramie ’33, Avi Rockmore-Saurkar ’33, and Logan Shaw ’33,  finished 9th, 10th, and 12th out of 18 in the 6th-grade-and-under division. 

A number of individual GDS students also won awards: In the 8th-grade-and-under division, Ezra won a medal for 9th place (out of 107 students), in the 6th-grade-and-under division, Jason, Zoe, Hugo, and Elliot won medals for 8th, 10th, 11th, and 14th place, respectively, out of 77 students. 

Thanks to the GDS community members who made this event possible: GDS high school Tournament Directors Ben Hellman ’25, and Haughton Neppl ’27, with seven additional GDS high schoolers: Aidyn Jafarov ’28, Jana Abdel-Gawad ’27, Nadia Bandy ’27, Paloma Evans ’27, Samuel Lerner ’27, Rebecca Noland ’27, and Alec Donath ’26, three GDS faculty members Sue Ikenberry, Abigail Lund, and Kent Hartman, and the many GDS parents who volunteered to spend their day scoring and reading for our younger students.  
 

Quiz Olympiad

Beyond Quizbowl….GDS’s Alum Matt Jackson ’10, participated in the third Quiz Olympiad, hosted by the British Quiz Association in Fuengirola, Spain. Matt joined Team USA B, whichtook the gold in the Aspirational Cup.

Debate

Congratulations on the GDS Debaters on their weekend feats! Kevin Xia ’25 and Dhilan Desai ’25 made the tournament finals, and earned their second qualifying bid to the Tournament of Champions (the end-of-year championship, TOC). Emma Renigar ’26 and Sam Wood ’26 made the semifinals and earned their first bid to the TOC. Emma was also the 4th individual speaker. 

Joseph Xu ’27 and Ananth Mangalam ’27 made the quarterfinals. Our Junior Varsity team of Noah Henderson ’26 and Emi Fitzgibbons ’26 made the quarterfinals. And our novices, Asher Baer '28 and Akhil Chawla ’28 were finalists in the novice division and both got top 10 speaker awards!