Quiz Bowl is heading to Nationals in May

For 10 points -- What team answers questions about a variety of topics? Quiz Bowl is a club in which the participants go to tournaments. At the tournaments, they face one other team at a time and answer a set of twenty trivia questions in teams of four. When one member buzzes in with the right answer, the team is awarded points and is offered a set of three bonus questions, which tend to be harder than the normal questions. The team with the most points wins.

Daniel Hirsch explains, "The defining feature of Quiz Bowl is the use of a “buzzer system” that lets players interrupt the reading of a question when they know the answer. That element adds a dimension of confidence, anticipation, and rapid recall to a game about knowing facts.”

The topics are just about anything including science, math, literature, and geography. Some tournaments are called Trash tournaments in which the questions are all pop culture.

Some example questions from the 2018 High School National Championship Tournament:

“During this battle, the “twin villages” of Krinkelt and Rocherath were defended by the 2nd Infantry Division on the approaches to Elsenborn Ridge. At the crisis of this battle, Anthony McAuliffe gave the commander of the 47th Panzer Corps the short message ”nuts!” and refused to surrender Bastogne. For 10 points—name this battle that started on December 16, 1944, in which the Germans tried to split Allied lines.”

“In Frida Kahloʹs painting ‘Henry Ford Hospital’, a torso, a fetus and one of these animals float above Kahloʹs bedridden body. Many species of these animals stab one another with a ”love dart” during mating. Ryan Reynolds voiced one of these animals whose DNA gets mixed with nitrous oxide in the 2013 film Turbo. For 10 points—name these slow shelled gastropods served in restaurants as escargot.”

“Planckʹs constant is about 4.14 times 10 to the –15 times this unit times seconds. Particle masses are often reported as powers of 10 times this unit over c squared. The binding energy of ground‐state hydrogen is 13.6 of this unit. A joule is roughly 10 to the 19 of it. For 10 points—what unit of energy symbolized eV.”

The A-Team consists of Joey Esposito, Sanjana Duvvuri, Zack Goldston, Daniel Hirsch, and Becca Bjelopera. The team has practice on Tuesdays and Fridays from after school until 4. The dedicated members study outside of practice. Tournaments are on Saturdays and last about six hours. Depending on the day, tournaments have six to twenty teams that attend. Some of the schools they compete against are Solon, Copley, Boardman, Brecksville-Broadview Hts, Cloverleaf, Olmsted Falls, and Westlake.

Quiz Bowl Coach Annie Walker said, “The Aurora team has won the Portage County League every year since I started coaching (15 years). However, I think the winning streak started before me. It's possible that Aurora has won for 20 years or more.”

The team won the annual Solon Winter Tournament on President's weekend.The AHS team also won the Portage County Tournament this year qualifying them for the National Tournament in Atlanta, Georgia in May right before finals. The team has done a lot of fundraising including a fundraiser at the Twinsburg Chipotle on February 19th.

Becca Bjelopera said, “I'm holy freaking excited to be going down to Atlanta. We tried to go last year, but couldn't get everything together in time.”