Updated on Feb. 2.

After defeating the freshmen team with a score of 360-280, the senior team will be moving on to play in the final Quiz Bowl round Feb. 3 at lunch in the Academic Quad. They will be competing against the sophomore team, which defeated the juniors 235-230 on Feb. 1, and the teacher team, which consists of science teacher Jim Birdsong, math teacher Jon Stark, social sciences teacher Ben Recktenwald and art teacher Jay Shelton.

Through the majority of the game, the freshmen trailed approximately 20 points behind the seniors. The two teams later tied at 30, then 130 points.

The senior team gained a strong lead towards the end of the game during the rapid-fire round, in which each team had one minute to answer as many questions as possible. The round ended with the seniors 80 points ahead of the freshmen leading to a final score of 360-280.

 

Updated Feb. 1.
Billed on promotional posters as “the best you’ve ever seen 2014”, the sophomore team participating in the first round of Quiz Bowl defeated the juniors (“F13RCE”) with a score of 235 to 230 on Feb. 1. In the remaining two rounds to be held during lunches in the Academic Quad, seniors will compete against the freshmen on Thursday, Feb. 2 and teachers will take on the two winning teams on Friday, Feb. 3. The event is hosted by Communications commission and aims to highlight the school’s academic achievement.

“A lot of the time sports get all the glory but … we thought Quiz Bowl [would be] a fun way to … focus on how smart our students are and showcase the students that really know what they’re talking about,” Communication commission lead senior Stacey Urauchi said.

The questions, written by Communications commission, test students’ knowledge on concepts ranging from physics to pop culture trivia. They were written with the intent of challenging the participants but not alienating the audience.

“For example, [if a question requires guessing a word], it won’t be too easy to guess but [to the audience], we want it to be familiar,” Communications commissioner senior Kartik Hedge said.

The questions were not all easy to guess for the sophomore team, which started off feeling confident, according to sophomore Prem Nair.

“Later it got a lot scarier,” he said. “[I think] we jumped on the gun far more than the juniors. We buzzed in too early without a sure answer in mind.”

Nevertheless his team will be moving on to play against the teacher team, consisting of science teacher Jim Birdsong, math teacher Jon Stark and social sciences teachers Bonnie Belshe and Ben Recktenwald, and the winner of the seniors vs. freshmen game. Freshman Andrew He hopes it will be his team that moves ahead to that final round.