The Quiz Bowl team did not place at either tournaments at St. James Academy and De Soto High School on Tuesday, Dec. 2. The team did not place at either tournaments, winning four out of eight rounds at De Soto with only four players instead of the usual five and tough questions cause the team to win two out of nine at St. James.

A complete team when competing is five players, however due to the conflicting tournaments, the team competing at De Soto only had four players.

“As a team we only had four people versus most of the other teams had five or six which probably affected us a little bit,” junior Ryan Schwaab said. “In general we did better than over half the teams.”

Junior Nadia Suhail said the team was split into two because their willlingness to compete in both tournaments.

“We’ll go to any meet that’s available,” Suhail said. “It’s important to have as many meets so everyone can go compete.”

The St. James Invitational was Suhail’s first time competing on the varsity level. Suhail said the team did well for facing difficult opponents and questions.

“The questions were definitely more challenging but I got a couple questions per round,” Suhail said. “I think we did well [for tough competition]; we have a winning [season] record.”

Lengthy questions made it difficult to beat the other team’s buzzer at the St. James invitational. “The questions at Saint James were structured differently so we tried to wait until the end of the question to answer,” Suhail said. “I think [we did poorly] because the questions were so long winded.”

Schwaab said the biggest factor in losing rounds was the quickness of the teams competing.

“What really decides the game is how quickly you react to each specific question,” Schwaab said. “The game is pretty much always decided by who gets within half a second of the correct answer. It’s all about getting the answer quicker than the other team.”