Quiz Bowl team wins tournament

The school’s Quiz Bowl team took home a win in their second regular season tournament at Saint Francis High School on Jan. 18. They scored first place in the competitive division against teams from 14 other schools.

With this win, the team has qualified for the 2020 PACE National Scholastic Championship, one of two national-level competitions for Quiz Bowl. The team is already getting ready for it. 

“I’m happy that we as a team were able to win this tournament,” senior Jason Hong said. “We hope to replicate our results at our next tournament.”

In Quiz Bowl, teams of four compete to answer tossup questions in diverse subjects ranging from French opera to physics. After answering a tossup correctly, teams work on three-part collaborative bonus questions. The team won the Jan. 18 contest despite one of their regular members, senior Brandon Wang, being gone.

“I think we played really well as a team given that we were short a team member,” Hong said. “Sathvik [Kaliyur] was filling in for Brandon, and he had a number of really clutch buzzes that helped us pull off a few close victories.”

In the end, the team of Hong, senior Jeffrey Ma, junior Rohan Kumar and Kaliyur beat out Mission San Jose to take first place.

The lower two division teams also performed well, with the novice team tying with Oakland College Prep for third place.