SSFS Quiz Bowl: 2025-2026 Team Season in Review

By Eduardo Polón, Quiz Bowl Coordinator

The 2025–2026 academic competition season concluded historically for Sandy Spring Friends School’s Quiz Bowl Team. After eleven consecutive appearances in the Montgomery Academic Beltway League Championship Round, the ‘Beests broke through—capturing their first-ever MABL title and cementing their place atop the region’s academic competition landscape.

Across all interscholastic formats of play, the team finished the season with an outstanding overall record of 30–2–0, including a dominant 21–1–0 mark in MABL competition and a perfect 2–0–0 performance on television’s It's Academic.

Over the course of the season, SSFS earned victories against the following schools (listed once each):

• Rockville High School
• James Hubert Blake High School
• Walt Whitman High School 
• Landon School
• Winston Churchill High School
• Poolesville High School
• Thomas S. Wootton High School
• Richard Montgomery High School 
• Montgomery Blair High School
• Wheaton High School 
• Gaithersburg High School
• Sherwood High School
• Springbrook High School
• Albert Einstein High School
• Walter Johnson High School
• Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
• Colonel Zadok A. Magruder High School

This breadth of victories underscores both the depth and consistency of this year’s squad.

Congratulations to this year’s SSFS Quiz Bowl Team, led by Captain Justin Carr (’26), and featuring Nate Miles (’26), Ian Donahue (’26), Steve Kim (’26), Benji Cherukuri (’27), Catherine Risen (’27), and Henry Navikas (’27).

This group’s collective efforts elevated an already distinguished program. Since the 2013–2014 academic year, the SSFS Quiz Bowl Team has compiled a remarkable overall record of 389–148–7 through AY 2025–26—reflecting more than a decade of sustained excellence, intellectual courage, and joyful competition.

Providing camaraderie for kindred spirits while celebrating academic achievement, the intrascholastic Quiz Bowl Club and the interscholastic Quiz Bowl Team provide healthy venues to foster friendships inspired by a mutual love of learning.  Best of all, it’s fun!  For more information, contact Eduardo, and click here to learn more about It’s Academic.