Quiz Bowl faces off against a record amount of 34 schools
The Quiz Bowl team entered their second tournament Tuesday, Dec. 1
Freezing in place, senior Manoj Turaga stares at his screen focusing on solving the problem.
December 4, 2020
On Tuesday, Dec. 1, the Quiz Bowl team took on 34 different schools in their second tournament of the year virtually through Zoom. The students were focused on improving their skills both as a team and individually. Despite their efforts, the team still did not manage to place Tuesday.
Looking back on the previous tournament, senior Manoj Turaga had many goals in mind for Tuesday’s tournament.
“What I tried to prepare for individually is being more confident in my answers. As a team, we try to have faster reaction times because we often get beat out by other teams because they buzz in faster. We also try to work on giving more well rounded answers,” Turaga said.
The team faced several challenges on Tuesday that pushed them and their efforts.
“A challenge that we faced was the internet problems that we were having. There was a 2 to 5 second delay for every question. A lot of easy points were lost this way,” Turaga said.
Also feeling challenged during the tournament was sophomore Madison Koester.
“My main challenge was that I don’t always know as much at varsity tournaments since usually the juniors and seniors go to varsity meets. As a team, the main challenge was the audio on Zoom lagging for us so that the other team heard the questions first and could answer before us,” Koester said.
Still, in spite of the results, both Turaga and Koester are satisfied with how the tournament went.
“I feel that we did quite well in this tournament. We did have a heavy disadvantage but seeing as we had a chance to win in almost every round, I think we performed well,” Turaga said. “I also liked how we had a lot of communication and sharing of responsibilities throughout the tournament. The newer members are starting to answer questions in tournaments, so it feels good not having the weight of the team be on the senior members,” Turaga said.
The team is looking to the future, and are already making plans for what they want to be working on together and individually during next practice.
“Based on the results I believe we should use practice questions for all the subjects that are used for tournaments. I think it’s good to use questions from each subject since all of us have different academic strengths,” Koester said.
Overall, the team was satisfied with their performance and they’re already looking forward to making improvements.
