A group of middle school students at St. Mark’s School of Texas became national quiz bowl champions last month, bringing home the school’s sixth national crown in nine years.
St. Mark’s, a private, all-boys school in Dallas, won first place out of 192 teams that competed in the National Academic Quiz Tournament. The win came in convincing fashion, as the team answered 94.1% of their questions correctly — nearly 13 percentage points ahead of the second place team.
“It was surreal,” said Ritam Setu, one of the team’s four members. “To know that you just beat a field of 192 extremely competitive teams and set school records, that is an incredible feeling.”
In a quiz bowl game, two teams of four people go head-to-head to quickly answer questions about a variety of topics, including science, literature, history, geography and philosophy. Competitors can hit the buzzer even before the moderator has finished reading the question, and correct answers unlock opportunities for more points.
“The thrill of buzzing with a correct answer, especially against a strong team, is what makes quiz bowl so likeable for me,” said Kamran Nawaz, the team’s captain.
St. Mark’s won 16 out of 17 games in May’s competition. Although normal school curriculum covers some of the material tested in quiz bowl tournaments, competitors often have to put in hours of extra studying to be fully prepared.
Greg Crook, the team’s coach and a seventh-grade humanities teacher, described the team as a “model of teamwork and preparation.”
Though individual knowledge is important, teamwork is a big element of quiz bowl. The middle school team at St. Mark’s used what Ritam called a “divide and conquer” strategy, where each person focused on a particular subject while also building their general knowledge base.
“Everyone, including me, plays better when we don’t focus on individual performance,” team member Nathan Aurora said. “We want to collectively know as much as possible.”
Though winning teams get a trophy, according to the National Academic Quiz Tournament, the true prize is learning and knowledge.
“I really like Quiz Bowl because it gives you an interesting motivation to go study more when you hear an unusual cool fact about something,” said Roger Wang, the team’s fourth member.
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