Official History of KBH-NYU
(1994 - present)

Right after this event "Velikolepnaya Semerka" ceased to exist because many people left the team and Yan the captain was left by himself. "Nashi v Gorode", on the other hand continued the idea of KBH, even though the team was reduced to four people, and in November of 1994 they organized the solo concert at NYU for their fellow students. After that three more members were added to the team - Agnessa Frishberg, Anna Beyder and Yevgeniya Sokolovskaya. The problem within the team, however, soon arose. The captain, Kiril, was too strict when it came to the material and rehearsals. He wrote much of the script, some of which other members refused to accept for good reasons, and insisted that others obeyed him. In short - it was a dictatorship. Not everyone was able to tolerate this and, as a result, a couple of members including Roman Yusupov left the team and joined Yan Kashepava who at the same time was building his new team with Boris Yezersky. At the end of April of 1995 two new teams, lead by two old captains performed a comedy show, not a game, at NYU which resembled KBH, except that there were no jurors. After a couple of more shows at local Brooklyn restaurants and parks Kiril's team collapsed. Anna Beyder, Agnessa Frishberg and Yevgeniya Sokolovskaya joined Yan's team. From that point Yan's KBH-NYU team became the official team of NYU.

This day became significant in KBH-NYU history for yet another reason. The contact between New York and Boston KBH teams was established with a hope of KBH contests. The hope became a reality and soon KBH-NYU's first game with MIT (Boston) was planed. During the process of preparation the team added Sergei Kireev, Alik Polevoy and Roman Bronshtein. Ten young, talented students started an excited journey in the world of American KBH.

The game with MIT was scheduled to take place in both cities. The first game was played in New York at NYU on December 2nd. KBH-NYU took its first victory very convincingly, to a standing ovation of its supporters. The next day the game was performed in Boston and this time the MIT team won, not without help from its jurors. At any rate, KBH-NYU made a strong impression in both cities and soon the first article by Yakov Borohovich about our team appeared in Novoe Russkoe Slovo.

In February of 1996, KBH-NYU organizes and hosts the first American KBH festival. Teams from Brandeis and Rutgers participated in this festival along with NYU. This event was recorded and shown on WMNB and another article appeared in Novoe Russkoe Slovo. A curious thing however is that while articles in Novoe Russkoe Slovo judged our team from a real perspective, there appeared a couple of articles in other local Russian newspapers criticizing and downgrading a young and talented team. These articles were written by...Kiril Dremlyukh. After being left by all his teammates and friends he found nothing better to do as to write critical articles about KBH-NYU. This, however, didn't bother the team as it looked forward to new games.

The next step for KBH-NYU was a double game with the united team of Boston at the end of March 1996. Even though the game was between the cities, the KBH team of New York was comprised entirely by KBH-NYU members while the Boston team was comprised by members of MIT, Brandeis, Harvard and Tufts Universities. Once again each city won at home, Boston being the first winner and NY winning the next day. This game was not a part of KBH championship but members of KBH-NYU did their best in preparation and some of the jokes and songs made for this game were the best we ever made. Once again, the whole page of Novoe Russkoe Slovo was devoted to this games and the game in New York was taped and shown on RTN.

The end of spring and entire summer was a vacation time for a team that in the space of four month participated at three different events. Even during this time, though, while there were no games, preparation for the final championship game in Boston scheduled for October of 1996 started to unfold. There was an attempt to participate at the World KBH festival held in Israel in early September, but the event was canceled and we stayed in New York.

Preparations for the final game of the season took place from September to late October. This game was between NYU, Harvard and Brandeis with the condition that the winner would become the first champion of American KBH. Since the game was held in Boston, little chance was given to KBH-NYU as a potential winner. Two games in Boston lead to two losses and the final game with two Boston teams surely didn't offer a great opportunity for us to become the champions. Another problem arose within the team with the girls feeling that they are not being treated fairly. This lead to personal problems and upsets. Some rehearsals were canceled. Our musician was causing additional problems. To the last day there wasn't enough material to perform. Captain's part was created on the way to Boston! Is this enough to be humiliated by two Bostonian teams in Boston? It appeared not, because for some reason that only KBHshiki can tell when the game started the team forgot about its differences and performed to the best of its ability. Many believed it was the last KBH game of their life and they didn't want to be defeated. For all those times that we play KBH it taught us to leave the stage with our heads high and this is what we did. Our final song was intended to be the final song of KBH-NYU for it was saying good bye to KBH. Our desire to end our KBH life brought us the title of champions. Our final song gave us a victory, a single point ahead of both Brandeis and Harvard. It seems so little but it was so much.

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Part 3

"Defending the title"

Perhaps it was our final victory that convinced us to stay and try again. While the girls left the team, seven guys decided to defend their title and KBH-NYU entered the new KBH championship. The speculations that we bought the jury in Boston (!) is another reason why we did it. Could we prove that we still can play KBH? Our first test was scheduled to be on March 30. This was the quarter-final game with Chicago KBH team. Game was scheduled to be held at NYU.

Before we played with Chicago, we participated in a very unusual KBH game held in Atlantic city. This game was between two KBH teams from SNG - "Novie Armyane" and XAI (Kharkov's Aviation institute). This was part of 35th anniversary of KBH and Maslyakov decided to bring two best teams to USA for a friendly competition. Our team showed a welcoming during this game - we were the first to appear and, according to many including Maslyakov, our performance was GREAT! Of course, we got to know KBHshiki from both teams and this was another important moment. On this high note we went into the final week of preparation to the upcoming game with Chicago. The team consisted of only guys, with seven old members and a new member - Leonid Muchnik, who played KBH in Kishinev and was a valuable addition to our team.

We expected an easy pass to the semifinals, what we've got was a fight till the end with Chicago. This was probably our weakest performance, mainly due to not enough preparation time, too much time was given to Atlantic city. Our texts were probably the best we ever had, it was the performance which was not great. Chicago team made a big impact and showed itself as a very strong team. The problem with this game was a rather strange behavior of the jury (again!). A lot of freewilling acts and poor judgement put a big bitter mark on the game. In any case, according to the audience, KBH-NYU were true winners but the jury upset the mood of the teams and audience. The result was achieved, we advanced to the semifinals, but there was a lot to learn from this game.

Next two month we rested from KBH, there are other things in life too like college, work, etc. We all wanted to get over Chicago game. But more importantly there was a desire to prove to ourselves that we can do better. We were looking for a chance to redeem ourselves, and to believe in our strength once more. That chance came when teams of Boston decided to have another KBH festival' on June 16th. During the team's meeting we decided to go there and show our best. New material was written and compiled with the best parts from Chicago game. A week of intensive rehearsals followed. We went to Boston with one idea - regain our confidence, the financial burden didn't matter - everyone was willing to pay from the pocket for the benefit of the team. We knew that people in Boston had their own image about our team, that image being not in our favor. We were about to change that.

To call our performance at the festival' good is to be very modest. It was excellent (from the words of those Bostonians who had their own image about our team). Two performances on stage - privetstvie, made especially for festival' and "muzikalka" totally transformed the image of the team to the positive side. It was our best performance ever - better than the final game! That night we were professionals on stage. That night we regained our confidence, we regained our position at the top of the league. We couldn't ask for more that night. The road to the semifinal was open in front of ever more confident and witted team.

When in late July the semifinal pairs were drawn, NYU was selected to play with Harvard. This, according to many, was the biggest and most important semifinal game. In September of 1997 we started our rehearsals for the game with Harvard. A couple of new people joined the team. Between rehearsals we managed to celebrate our one year anniversary of victory in Boston in style - we went to Boston to see KBH game and celebrated there, just like a year ago. Our game was set to be held at Linkol'n High school - the first KBH game to be staged at this very popular place among Russian artists. It was professionally organized by Boris Yezersky - our administrator. The stage was set for the clash of the giants! The only problem we faced was the jury selection...

It was the clash of the giants, one of the best games in American KBH. We called it "dosrochnii final" - meaning that the winning team would eventually win the championship. It was a very tense and even game with both teams taking the lead throughout it. Our fears about the jurors proved right. At the end their sympathy with Harvard proved decisive. Harvard won that game, thus avenging on their loss in the last year's final. They could have won without the help of the jurors, it would have made it more pleasant for everyone. At the end we were left out of the final game - but we gave a great performance worthy of the champions.

As we predicted, Harvard won the championship and in some style. KBH-NYU decided to start in a new championship season on May 2nd, this time it was a new team - Yan and Leonid gathered newcomers for the first game. As for the rest of us (Alik, Roman, Igor', Sergey, Boris and Romzya) - we decided to rest and give newcomers a chance, we really need new faces in our team, someone who will take over from us. But we didn't sing our final song yet! KBH for us is not a game - it is a way of life.

On May 2nd a new KBH-NYU collected it's first victory in a new 1998 KBH championship over KBH teams of Cornell and Bentley college. A new team performed very well and had no trouble defeating two other new teams. New members - Oleg Simonov, Dmitrij Chernov and Yan Zil'berman brought with them a new, valuable addition to NYU team and deserved a lot of praise for their efforts. As always, articles from "Novoe Russkoe Slovo" covered this game. Next was a quarterfinal game - a serious test for a new team, that at that time had only 6 members (with only Yan and Lenya left from the old squad). It was time for old guards to come back and add their experience to the determination of new members.

Roman, Igor' and Romzya did just that, with Boris assisting on administrative level with Yan Zil'berman on his side. Two more members were added - Vadim Goldsman i Vanya - our "upstate boys". The games were scheduled to resume in November with KBH-NYU facing its old rivals - Chicago and Brandeis in one of the quarterfinal games. Game was to take place in Chicago. However, first the game was moved from November to January and then it was declared that this will be a semifinal, not a quarterfinal game. In the meantime, Yan tried to organize a KBH festival' in December, however it had to be canceled. All of the team's efforts were put forth for the game in Chicago that was ahead.

For those of us who returned to the team it was not easy to do so because nobody wants to play in the corrupt league, dominated by the Boston officials that set their own rule the way they want to. However, we play KBH not for the marks, but for the love of the game, even though the result is also very important. From our past experiences, especially the game with Harvard, we knew that the result of the game in Chicago would depend on the jury members. By having no representation - a clear violation of the league rule, we knew that our chances were slim to none to progress further.

In the ever changing world there seems to be never changing jury in American KBH :) Is it an irony or sign from above that every time KBH NYU has a game there are always a few people in the jury who look at us as if we were not a KBH team, but rather a bunch of intruders in their KBH league that had to be eliminated at all cost. They did eliminate us at the end, after we showed a great "privetstvie", "razminka" and ekspromt number and our captain, Yan, produced one of the best performance in captain's number in the history of the league. At the end of the game the result was as we knew it would be before it even started - we've got 3rd place and with it the end of the season.