Katelyn Liu
November 20th, 2021
Last Friday, student members of the Quiz Bowl team faced yet another loss as the Humanities teachers celebrated their second victory in a row. During the heated match, competitors put their historical, political, scientific, and pop-culture knowledge to the test, from celebrating each other’s wins as they answered obscure and random trivia questions, to collapsing from the despair and heat when they didn’t.
Fueled by the “memes” and frustration that spawned from their defeat during their last intramural event, the student team was determined to put in their best effort to prepare for this event. They hosted weekly practices after school and grinded through packets of sample questions that covered a range of obscure topics.
It seemed like all that training had paid off and that finally, after months of mental and emotional preparation, they could finally redeem themselves from last year’s outcome. Unfortunately for the students, Danny Han (11) buzzed in early on a question in the last few seconds of the round, before answering with an incorrect answer and resulting in a deduction of five points.
The deduction led to a tie between the students and teachers as Danny collapsed out of his chair in frustration and disappointment. The teachers were able to triumphantly defend their title.
The student team proudly raising their buzzers to signify their “buzz-in” before the teacher team.
Danny described the mishap as “tragic”; likewise, his fellow members lightheartedly voiced their frustration. “[The most challenging part about Quizbowl is] remembering an answer after buzzing in. It’s so easy to forget the answer you had as soon as you hit the buzzer,” Danny explains. Another member, Marvin Wong (11), adds that time is the most stressful factor in these kinds of competitions, explaining that it’s hard to “take time to think about it while still buzzing in before the other side”.
Despite the many obscure figures or event names that left even some of the teachers in those specific fields speechless, they were ultimately able to balance out tier knowledge of the past and present, spanning from ancient literature and war history to pop culture and entertainment.
When asked about how he prepared for this event, Mr. Longrie, in good-humor, explained that his informal trivia training began when he was just a kid. He says, “I stayed in a lot as a child and read books”, attributing this to his success.
Despite the sweltering heat that only furthered the intensity of the match, both teams were able to apply their knowledge of the world in a fun game of trivia. And while the students lost by a much smaller margin than they had previously, there’s no telling how the students will bounce back in the next student-teacher Quiz Bowl Intramural.