Greenhill’s two Quiz Bowl teams recently qualified for a pair of national tournaments in the second annual Hornet Hullabaloo National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) competition hosted on campus.

Greenhill’s squads placed third and seventh, respectively, out of 27 teams.

The results compiled by Greenhill’s A and B teams will allow them to compete in upcoming national tournaments in Chicago and Atlanta. The A team members are: Josh Rubel ’22; Gokulan Anand ’22; Shruti Siva ’22 and Nikky Nandipati ’24. The B team members are:  Bruno Pasquinelli ’20; Jude Griffin ’22; Varun Gande ’20; Daniel Rothstein ’21 and Gabriel Patel ’22.

Sophomore Josh Rubel captained the A team and led them to their third-place finish. The competitors squared off in  teams of four with nearly 20 questions per round; each team ultimately faced close to 200 questions over the course of the tournament.

“It’s a lot like Jeopardy and it’s fun to go to competitions,” Rubel said.

Rubel’s A team finished the tournament with a 7-1 overall record, falling two questions short of advancing to the final round. Pasquinelli’s B team finished with a 7-2 record, falling in the quarterfinals to St. Mark’s School of Texas.

The moderator of each round reads a question to the teams. A team is awarded more points for correctly answering a question early in the process.  As the question becomes progressively easier to understand, the point value decreases.

If a team buzzes in and answers the question wrong, points are deducted and the opposing team is given an opportunity to answer.

The Greenhill teams will put their skills to the test later in the year at tournaments at Parish Episcopal School in Dallas and other locations.

“[During practice] we read questions and try to answer them to practice for competitions,” Rubel said.

The nature of Quiz Bowl is asking questions about any topic. Greenhill team members develop areas of expertise to cover potential topic areas.

“We will divide up subjects between each person on the team,” Rubel said. “I’m the history person on our team.”

The Greenhill Quiz Bowl program has a long track record of success.  One of the Greenhill teams placed fifth in the inaugural Hornet Hullabaloo last year.

This year’s tournament also marked the debut of a new Greenhill Quiz Bowl coach, Head of School Lee Hark, who took over from former Middle School math teacher Grant Mindle.

“The transition has been fairly seamless,” Rubel said. “It has been a good transition.”