The senior and junior high quiz bowl teams have practiced every week for their state tournament April 11 and other competitions.
AP history teacher Will Heatherly began helping out physics teacher Alan Scott with the two quiz bowl teams last year, and between the two there’s been six years of experience. Before he transferred here, Heatherly was Bryant Middle School’s Quiz Bowl sponsor.
“I remember Ms. [Sue] Reeves sent out an email to all of the teachers asking for someone to take over the team since the previous sponsor didn’t have enough time for it. And I deleted it,” Heatherly said. “She sent it out again and rather than see the club die I decided to take over. And now I’m on the state board and I absolutely love it.”
The junior high team is strictly just the freshmen. AP Language teacher Tim Sisk helps Heatherly advise the team.
“They’re at a different level and are doing really well,” Heatherly said. “I expect them to go to state as long as they show up and do their best.”
Filled with mostly sophomores, the senior high team has sophomore Malcolm Jackson as the Captain.
At practices, members play games to study the academic and trivia questions that might arise. Students also look over what categories they might have to answer questions from and talk about different types of strategy.
“We even give them assignments over breaks sometimes, because other schools have actual classes for Quiz Bowl, we have to work all the more to be on the same level,” Heatherly said.
At tournaments there are usually four 30-minute games with each school’s team, and if a team wins four games then they’ll be going to the tournament. There are around 20 students on the team but the team travels with 8 to 10 students when attending competitions. Quiz bowl focuses on analytical thought and is usually a mixture of two or three different things. While the questions are factual, they are determined to make the students think, so they’re open-ended questions.
“I’ll be at the state tournament in April no matter what because I am on the state board,” Heatherly said. “But it’d be awesome if I got to go with my school.”
Quiz Bowl has tournaments in February for the junior high team and March and April for the senior high team. The state tournament is only for the senior high and is April 11.
“It really helps out student’s self-confidence because to be good, they have to not be afraid to get a question wrong,” Heatherly said. “Getting to compete against people you don’t know also helps with that and the comradery boosts their self-esteem.”
