The new SHS History Bowl team may have been intimidated before the competition, but they walked out of the NorCal regional competition, proud holders of a spot in the national History Bowl competition.

Nationals are going to be from April 27 to 29 in Washington, D.C., at the Crystal Gateway Marriot Hotel. However, co captain Maggy Liu said that SHS will only be competing on April 28.

The team consists of juniors Liu, Kabir Chandrashekar, Spencer Goldman, and Nikki Bedekar, as well as seniors Myron Zhang and Kellie Chiou.

According to Liu, the regional competition went smoothly. “We moved from room to room in San Leandro High School for our matches and had a nice long lunch break,” she said.
Liu said that the accomplishment was exciting for the entire team. “I think everyone was really
surprised,” said Liu. “We'd seen the list of schools going beforehand and were quite intimidated. Also, we were under the impression that we'd have to win regionals in order to go to nationals, but the qualifications for nationals were actually more lenient—we had to get a 3-2 record or better.”

As for preparation, Liu admitted that the practices didn’t help much in terms of the questions. Instead, they helped more with team bonding than anything. “We only had about a month to prepare, so I think we relied more on pre-existing knowledge. Preparing as a team helped us bond,” Liu said.
In the end, Liu said that she really appreciated the entire fashion and the way that the event was handled. “ It was awesome! everything was very professional and smooth and fun,” Liu said.
As far as predictions go, however, Liu said, “We have a strict team policy not to predict anything because predictions jinx everything. So, no comment.”