The Quiz Bowl club continued to meet every Monday morning in Room H213. Throughout the semester, the club leadership experimented with teams to determine the best combinations of topic expertise for each team. According to Akash Bhowmik, club president and senior, there has been substantial improvement on the A Team compared to the statistics from tournaments in the previous school year.

Bhowmik said via email, “Our current team dynamic is working very well, with our newer members’ strongest categories including history and science, two important subjects in the Quiz Bowl canon… Carmel Quiz Bowl has been making deep strides. Recently, we won the Purdue Buzzathon where our A Team cleared the field with a 10-0 score, receiving an average game win margin of 600+ points, a truly astonishing feat for us.”

This weekend, the club will be participating in one of their largest tournaments, the Reinstein Varsity Tournament, at Barrington High School in Illinois.

“Some of the best teams in the country will be at that tournament,” Club sponsor James Hambley said, “including the defending national champion in the large school division for NAQT—National Academic Quiz Tournaments.”

Bhowmik agreed that there would be difficult competition during the tournament. He said, “with 52 teams registered to attend, receiving a top finish will definitely be a challenge. Right now, we’re looking at facing teams from Georgia, Illinois, and Michigan, so we get to have a taste of what the other top circuits have to offer,” adding that “it’ll definitely be a step up in terms of difficulty and field strength compared to our other tournaments.”

Additionally, preparation for January Regionals tournaments has continued, as well as planning for the major tournaments in the second semester, such as the High School National Championship tournament in May 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia, which three CHS Quiz Bowl teams qualified for. By Claire He