Falcons suffer defeat at Quiz Bowl

The History Bowl team suffered eight defeats during a Quiz Bowl tournament held at UC Berkeley on Oct. 24, with the result that the Falcons did not qualify for playoffs. The team competed against 10 of 45 other Northern California high school teams that attended the competition.

The team lost to schools such as Bellarmine Preparatory College, Amador Valley High and Valley Christian and only won only two of its 10 matches.

Varsity member Arjun Mishra said the team had only three varsity members at the competition, “so we were severely undermanned.”

Quiz Bowl consists of various categories, primarily focused on philosophy, science, history, arts and geography.

Though Quiz Bowl has been an unofficial group on campus in the past few years, there is not an official Quiz Bowl team with an adviser. As a result, participants said attendance has been inconsistent.

Varsity team co-captain Mason Tian says he considers Quiz Bowl as “more of a fun side thing for [him] and other people who attended.”

According to Tian, both varsity and JV played “average,”  since it was the first time either teams’ current members had attended a Quiz Bowl competition.

“In general, our team is extremely strong at history because a lot of History Bowl members attend, but in other categories, especially literature, we tend to get shut out by more established teams,” Tian said. “Other more teams have players that excel in all categories, and so we can't compete with them.”

Quiz Bowl is not an official club or organization at SHS, and Tian does not have high hopes for it in the future.

“I believe that it's unlikely that we will qualify for Quiz Bowl nationals, and even if we do, we don't plan to attend because our team isn't balanced,” Tian said. “In the future, we plan on continuing to attend Quiz Bowl tournaments, but we don't really have a specific goal.”