Quiz Bowl reflects on performance at penultimate tournament

Team plans to make changes before Nationals

Sophomore+Quiz+Bowl+members+Aaron+Kasic%2C+Ayanna+Nathan+and+Jenna+Cook+compete+in+final+tournament+Saturday%2C+March+18+at+Burnsville+High+School.+Team+members+will+compete+at+Nationals+May+26-28.+

Emma Kempf

Sophomore Quiz Bowl members Aaron Kasic, Ayanna Nathan and Jenna Cook compete in final tournament Saturday, March 18 at Burnsville High School. Team members will compete at Nationals May 26-28.

Izzy Leviton, Samyu Yenamandra

As sophomore Lily Johnson looks back on the Quiz Bowl team’s final tournament before the National tournament she believes the team worked coherently and performed well.

According to Johnson, on March 18 three Park teams competed at Burnsville high school.

“I thought that we worked well as a team,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to get used to working with other people, but I think we did good. We won a lot of matches. It was fun and it was good to end on that.”

Science teacher Peter Dangerfield said despite a few of the teams doing well, the teams could have performed better as a whole.

“I would have loved to see our team do a little bit better. It felt like a whole bunch of our kids were just off on Saturday for one reason or another, but it went okay,” Dangerfield said. “The other underclassmen team went three and six and they have the ability to do better than that, I know they do. Also the A team lost a match or two that I didn’t think they should, but then they came back towards the second half of it and won a game or two that really showed they can participate with those big schools.”

According to Johnson, the team’s performance would have fared better if the team had answered faster and had submitted more guesstimates, but the team plans to work on this consistently during the following practices.

“I wish, with bonuses and stuff, we had made more educated guesses, answered quicker and worked on timing,” Johnson said. “We are hoping to do a lot more. They are trying to have more practices during the week, go to more tournaments, have more people, and have more opportunities to work on questions.”

Dangerfield said the Quiz Bowl team will practice more skills regularly until the Nationals meet.

“We are going to keep on practicing because we’ve still got a national tournament that’s, in fact, after graduation for the seniors, so we’re going to keep on practicing the rest of the year,” Dangerfield said.

While sophomore Sidney Hosfield said she will not be attending Nationals, it will be a great opportunity for the other members.

“We did really good. We had a lot of new players on the team and just for them to get warmed up and stuff is good for next year,” Hosfield said. “There’s a Nationals meet, I’m not going to that either, but it’s in Atlanta and that should be fun for the people that are going.”

According to National Academic Quiz Tournaments Nationals will take place in Atlanta Georgia from May 26-28.