Quiz Bowl to form new team

After all but one of its members graduated last spring, the Quiz Bowl team is returning to the school this year through the efforts of senior Nick Chow.

Quiz Bowl is a trivia game that consists of questions about literature, science, history, math, art and “trash,” or pop culture. It uses the buzzer system, or “lockout device,” which allow players to interrupt the reading of a question when they know the answer.

Chow believes this competition has value for students who want to learn.

“[My] purpose behind [restarting] Quiz Bowl this year was to make it a way for lots of students to experience a whole new academic competition,” Chow said. “It’s also a lot of fun to learn random facts and trivia, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to [continue] this.”

In 2009, alumnus Vijay Menon, who graduated in 2011, founded the original Quiz Bowl Club, and, under his leadership, Quiz Bowl began to flourish. At one point, the team even participated in Quiz Kids, a televised branch of Quiz Bowl, and made it to the second round.

After Menon graduated, however, Quiz Bowl started to slowly fade away. 2013 alumna Maggie Liu restarted Quiz Bowl as an unofficial club in 2011, but it was “kind of a secret organization” and many people did not know of its existence on campus because of lack of publicity, Chow said.

In addition, its members were all seniors with the exception of Chow, who was at that time a junior. As a result, the entire team other than Chow graduated at once, leaving the Quiz Bowl team without experienced members.

Also, while the team led by Liu had been strong in history and science related questions, it had struggled with other topics. Chow hopes to improve Quiz Bowl's strengths in other areas as well as history and science. 

“A lot of Quiz Bowl people last year were from History Bowl, so we knew all the history [questions],” Chow said. “We had some Science Bowl people, but other than that we didn’t really have any other people.”

Quiz Bowl will most likely not hold tryouts; anyone who is interested would be able to join. Chow plans to have about two to three teams, which will consist of four to five members, per competition.

Although the team will have scrimmages and practices to prepare for competitions, most of the preparation will come from independent studying with the help of online resources, Chow said.

“There’s thousands of questions you can practice on,” Chow said. “It’s really up to the individual to prepare, but as a team, there are definitely tips and knowledge that we can pass on to [members].”

When Quiz Bowl forms, the team will face challenging opponents from neighboring schools such as phenomenon senior Sameer Rai from Bellarmine, who was individually recognized as a national tournament All-Star last year.

Chow believes that Quiz Bowl’s real benefits lie in the knowledge participants gain. 

“It’s an excuse to dig deeper into [subjects],” Chow said. “If you really like to learn, this is a great excuse to show off your knowledge while [learning].”