MVS defeated three teams in the national Top 50 Morlan Rankings on the road to the championship: #8 High Tech A (Lincroft, NJ), #25 St. Mark’s A (Dallas, TX), and #40 Parish Episcopal (Dallas, TX). Those are all-school national rankings, not just Small Schools. Many teams in the Small School Field come from magnet schools ranked in the USNWR Top 50 High Schools in America: BASIS Scottsdale (AZ), The School for the Talented and Gifted (TX), High Tech (NJ), Early College at Guilford (NC). Additionally, I’m pretty sure that MVS was one of the smallest Small Schools in the field (I haven’t checked every single school’s enrollment, but we were definitely the smallest school in the top 6 by a good margin).

The NAQT Small School National Championship Tournament has two divisions: Traditional Public (for non-selective public high schools with enrollments under 500 in grades 10-12) and Open (for any non-homeschool collective with fewer than 350 students in grades 10-12). Most of the teams in the Open division are independent schools, religiously-affiliated schools, and magnet/charter schools.

This year, 72 teams competed in the Open division, which MVS A won with a 14-2 record. The team lost twice to High Tech A (Lincroft, NJ) in the Saturday preliminary rounds before playing them again in the playoffs and defeating them 570-260. Junior captain John John Groger was named a Tournament All-Star for his 84.17 PPG scoring average (4th overall). MVS B, a team comprised of freshmen and sophomores, went 4-6 in the preliminary rounds. Sophomore captain Sahir Kabir was named a Tournament Rising Star for being among the top 6 9th and 10th grade scorers at the tournament.

Miami Valley A is currently ranked 7th in the country in the national quizbowl Morlan Rankings and 12th nationally on Groger Ranks (a student-run quizbowl stats website that also happens to have been founded by John John and William Groger). Both of those rankings are for all schools, not just small schools.