After placing third in the West Division, the quiz bowl team tied for sixth place at the state tournament Feb. 19 at Burnsville High School.

In the first round of the tournament, the team beat Edina 460-265. The team continued their success in the second round, where they beat Mounds Park Academy 440-325.

Senior Aaron Goodman said the team was able to win the first two rounds of the tournament fairly easily.

“We started out slow and then during the last round we ended up pulling away from both of those teams,” Goodman said. “There were a lot of questions which we were generally good at, geography, history, current events, and politics, and we happened to get a lot of those questions during the last round of those matches.”

According to adviser Bruce McLean, the success from the first two rounds resulted in the team playing in the quarter finals of the tournament. The team competed against Blake, who won 510-400 in a close match.

“We lost to Blake, who was in our division and who we lost to before, so we lost to a very good team,” McLean said.

This loss placed the team in the loser’s bracket, where they played Eastview. They lost to Eastview 365-400.

“We were pretty close to each other and then it came down to the last question and Eastview got it, so they won and we were done,” McLean said. “It would’ve been nice to have beat Eastview.”

Goodman said he attributed this loss to the limited knowledge of the members.

“Against Eastview, we ended up getting a lot of science and math questions, which we weren’t quite as good at,” Goodman said.

Despite the loss to Blake and Eastview, McLean said he was happy with the overall results.

“The kids played very well,” McLean said. “They answered the questions, they got them quickly.”

Similar to McLean, Goodman said he was pleased with the results as they are better than previous years.

“Last year we didn’t do quite as well, so it is definitely encouraging to be improving as a team,” Goodman said. “It is a really good result for us being top ten in the state.”

This year’s performance surpassed expectations, according to Goodman.

“We have been generally pretty good throughout the years, but this year it seemed like we kind of made it to almost a little bit of a higher level,” Goodman said. “We were beating teams that sometimes we didn’t beat in the past.”

Goodman said the greatest joy of the tournament was beating an opponent who had won in previous years.

“Beating Edina was definitely the best part of the season. It is a school we have definitely lost to in the past,” Goodman said. “Obviously it is always fun to beat schools like Edina; they are bigger and more prestigious in a sense.”

Quiz bowl members also participated in a Saturday tournament Feb. 21 at Roseville High School. McLean said he was proud of the way the team played, as they finished in ninth place out of the 32 competing teams.

“They had five matches in the preliminary round and we were 5-1,” McLean said. “Then we won one round in the playoffs and then we lost to Wayzata in the second game.”

Though Goodman has yet to participate in the Saturday tournaments, he said he looks forward to these tournaments as it provides more opportunities for him to play.

“You definitely get a lot more games in. Usually in one of the Thursday tournaments you only play four, but in these Saturday tournaments you end up playing a lot more,” Goodman said.

The team’s next tournament is Feb. 28 at Armstrong High School, followed by another tournament March 7 at Eastview High School. McLean also said the team is considering participating at nationals May 29-31 in Chicago.