Students’ enthusiasm for history revealed in competition

A group of students who share a passion for history and a thirst for intense competition have found their calling, the History Bowl.

This January, a team of students was formed for the first time to compete in the upcoming History Bowl tournament.

The 10 students who are a part of the History Bowl group are split up into a varsity team and JV team. Varsity consists of seniors Myron Zhang and Kellie Chiou and juniors Spencer Goldman, Nikki Bedekar, Kabir Chandrasekher and Maggy Liu. JV consists of sophomores Robert Eng, Kevin Jiang, Aditya Choudhary and Andrew Chang. The groups meet on Wednesdays during collaboration.

AP US History and World Geography teacher Matt Torrens is the History Bowl team adviser.
“I love that there are students on this campus who are geekier about history than I am,” he said.
During a History Bowl tournament, only four people can play on a team at a time, so the group plans on cycling through its varsity members.

Junior Maggy Liu and senior Myron Zhang are the ringleaders for the fledgling History Bowl team. They organize the weekly meetings and hold tryouts for new members.
As heads of the club, Liu and Zhang both have a passion for the subject and focus on specific branches of history. Liu enjoys social history, while Zhang prefers political and military history.

“My specialty would be social history, which is really broad. I have the most knowledge of art history, religion and philosophy,” Liu said.
Because the History Bowl team has been established this school year, Zhang is well aware that the team needs to focus on getting its footing.
“This year’s [History Bowl team] is pretty much akin to a pilot program,” said Zhang. “It would be wonderful if we made serious inroads into the competition, but right now we just need to get our feet wet and get the History Bowl program on a firm foundation.”

When the History Bowl members meet on Wednesday mornings, they practice by asking historical questions, using buzzers to answer them and adhering to the style of the real competition.
“There are teams of four and the moderator asks questions. You have to press a buzzer in order to get the points. There is usually a pyramid style, which means that the first question will be very trivial and specific,” Liu said.

The way the competition is organized, the hardest questions are answered first.
“As you get deeper with the questions, [the answers] become more and more obvious,” Liu added.
The History Bowl teams use the knowledge of members’ strengths and weaknesses in order to determine who is chosen to answer first.

“The idea is that the people who are adept at answering the trivial things about people in history will be able to answer questions first,” Liu said.

Liu believes that the activities offered at the school are largely directed at students who enjoy math or science, and that the gap between humanities activities and science and math activities is much too great.

“I was surprised by how many people were interested in the bowl,” Liu said. “If you look at math or science, there are so many activities catering to students who enjoy it, but not nearly as many for students who enjoy history. There needs to be something like History Bowl at Saratoga to even it out.”

The History Bowl teams are practicing for their tournament, which will be held on March 3 at San Leandro High in Alameda County.