Two Middle School Quiz Bowl teams qualified for the National Academic Quiz Tournaments Middle School National Championship Tournament. These two teams qualified for the national tournament by finishing top 15% of a local tournament or top 8 teams. 

In the first three weeks of school, Middle School quiz bowl coach, James Herman sent out an email to the whole Middle School. Quiz bowl is a yearlong activity where teams of four compete, using a buzzer system to answer academic questions about history, literature, science and other disciplines.  Students compete in local and state tournament throughout the year, and the competitive season culminates in the NAQT national tournament in Rosemont, Illinois. 

“In Quiz bowl, you get to demonstrate your academic skill level while having fun,” Zachary Bond said, a seventh grader who was in Quiz Bowl for two years. 

Quiz bowl tossup questions are pyramid style, starting with hard clues and progressing towards easier clues for answering the question earlier with 15 points instead of 10. The team who answered the tossup question is rewarded with three bonus questions, each worth ten points, which the team can collaborate on. These questions can cover a variety of topics. Teams must know important facts across all topics instead of just one. 

“You need to put the strongest people across all subjects together to make a good team,” Herman said. 

 Tournaments usually last from about 8:30 a.m. to 3:30p.m. on Saturdays. Students play anywhere between five to eight regular matches before entering a playoff. The playoff rounds are either structured as single elimination or, round robin format. 

 At a tournament in March, the team showed improvement as they won 27 total games across all Middle School divisions, with a total of 6 teams and 56 total games, according to NAQT website. Team A placed second out of 11 in the championship division, and team C placed first out of 16 in the novice division.