What got you into Quizbowl?

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What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by TheCzarMan »

I remember in 6th grade reading a book, I forget the name, it was about a group of middle schoolers somewhere in the Hudson River Valley who form a Quizbowl team and play and win against a team older and who most thought were smarter. I remember the book had a bunch of references to Lewis Carroll and the winning answer was Through the Looking Glass.

Then when I came to High School I found out that it had a quiz bowl team (My old school district/what would have been my High School did not). My freshman year I could not find the meetings due to construction and not being able to hear school announcements. My 2nd year (Sophomore, last year) I found it, only was able to find out when the first couple of meetings were, then suddenly in January the captain gives me a permission slip, takes me to the HHHW competition and throws me into A team halfway through the first match. Rest is history.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by AndyShootsAndyScores »

TheCzarMan wrote:I remember in 6th grade reading a book, I forget the name, it was about a group of middle schoolers somewhere in the Hudson River Valley who form a Quizbowl team and play and win against a team older and who most thought were smarter. I remember the book had a bunch of references to Lewis Carroll and the winning answer was Through the Looking Glass.
I know exactly what book you're talking about. Something about taking tea-time with one of the kids is all I remember. I can see the cover clear as day in my head, but there's a huge mental smudge on the title.

I was just sitting there after school in fifth grade and one of my friends who was already on the team invited me there. Only answered three, but it was enough to leave me wanting more.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by TheCzarMan »

AndyShootsAndyScores wrote:
TheCzarMan wrote:I remember in 6th grade reading a book, I forget the name, it was about a group of middle schoolers somewhere in the Hudson River Valley who form a Quizbowl team and play and win against a team older and who most thought were smarter. I remember the book had a bunch of references to Lewis Carroll and the winning answer was Through the Looking Glass.
I know exactly what book you're talking about. Something about taking tea-time with one of the kids is all I remember. I can see the cover clear as day in my head, but there's a huge mental smudge on the title.

I was just sitting there after school in fifth grade and one of my friends who was already on the team invited me there. Only answered three, but it was enough to leave me wanting more.
I know! It's right in my mind right now. That book was probably my 2nd favorite curriculum book in Middle School, behind Where the Red Fern Grows (Call of the Wild would be higher, but it was overshadowed by the fact that White Fang was in the back of the same book and overshadowed it).
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by NoahMinkCHS »

Was the book The View from Saturday?

In my case, my elementary school had a team that was run by the gifted program teacher. The team was open to 5th and 6th graders, but every once in awhile, she would bust out the Quiz-a-Matic and questions from Patrick's Press or Campbell's for younger classes. I did pretty well, so I was "on the radar", so to speak, for when I became eligible for interscholastic competition. Quiz bowl was definitely on my radar, too.

When I got to fifth grade, I dominated the qualifying test, and was one of only a couple players (I think the 6th grade captain was the other) that played every round of every match. My team won the county tournament for the first time ever, and I was pretty much hooked.

I was fortunate that I continued to have dedicated coaches and teammates in middle and high school, which kept me interested and working hard on into college.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by TheCzarMan »

It is the View from Saturday. Thanks for getting that off the tip of my tongue!
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

In VA we don't really have middle school programs...I did KMO in elementary school and was wondering aimlessly through the cafeteria/commons area of MLWGS the night that rising freshman come to check out clubs, teams, and electives when I saw a banner that said "BoB Squad" and got curious. The two people at the booth (Mehdi and Angela, I think, thanks guys) convinced me to put my name on the interest list. I also signed up for Model UN, got their invitation email, and decided it was both too expensive and too much work to be worth it. I got the invite email from Mehdi after the first day of school, went to lunch practice the next day, and never left.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by The Atom Strikes! »

Our school has a middle school tournament that feeds most of our school's players, but I wasn't one of them. One day, in Java Programming, Mr. Tressler convinced me to join. I walked on, started to play, and realized that I was somewhat good. Then I played on a team that qualified for Nationals at my first tournament (the 2005 LIFT). Then, I kept playing.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by AKKOLADE »

Was told about it for the first time as a sixth grader, thought it was pretty awesome since Jeopardy! was my favorite since I was four and have been participating one way or another since.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by evilmonkey »

After doing well in geography bees and spelling bees in elementary school, I was looking for academic competitions when I went to middle school. There I discovered Academic Superbowl (the Indiana form) and Spell Bowl. However, when I transferred to Culver for my sophomore year, they didn't deal with any of that crap. However, me, hungry for competition, eventually stumbled upon Herr Blessman and his "quiz bowl" at the activities fair.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by STPickrell »

When I showed up as a 9th grader, the team had heard about me, so the two senior co-captains tracked down a couple of my classmates to ensure that I didn't miss the practice and the meets. All Warren County did back then was a local league, we didn't really get involved in tournaments, etc., until 11th grade.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by ktour84 »

I did the geography and spelling bees, even making it to the Minnesota state geography bee finals in 5th grade, but my schools in Illinois didn't do those. Instead, there was some KMO-like computer test, then the middle school competitions in the greater Rockford area.

As far as the non-competition aspects, I suppose reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica set for fun in elementary school and getting National Geographic helped build the knowledge base and desire to learn more. Having decent public libraries was useful because it allowed me access to a wide range of books.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

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I never knew my high school even had a scholastic bowl team. But, lo and behold, a few years ago I got out an old yearbook and sure enough, they have a picture. Of course, I look at who played and say, 'oh yeah, I could've taken those guys...' But I digress (the question was how I got in...).
So, in my first few years of teaching at a middle school in Cahokia, I was involved with the basketball team, helping with the scoreboard, and eventually doing PA announcing there and at the high school. Anyway, in my various tours of the IESA web site, I once printed out the entire manual of activities so that I could get a firm grip on the policies governing basketball. Well, my eyes fell to the 'scholastic bowl' activity and I began to read about it. The idea of our school fielding an academic team intrigued me. I approached my principal with the idea of perhaps entering the IESA State Series for scholastic bowl, and with questions of just how we'd get that off the ground. He reached over to a pile on his desk and produced a brochure that had just arrived. It was about the IESA schoalstic bowl coaches' workshop, scheduled for that October. He said he'd send me to it, if I'd like, and I could discover more, and maybe even find some coaches willing to play us. He closed with, "This would be really something. We've never had an academic team, of any kind, before."
To this remark I replied, "I know our standardized test scores don't stack up well with most schools, but I'm willing to put our top kids against anyone else's top kids."
That was in the fall of 1997. I went to the workshop, assembled a team that practiced with no buzzer, and defeated a Beth Young-coached Quincy JHS team at our first quadrangular (true story: she wanted the buzzers tested at halftime!). The excitement of the kids during that bus ride home really hoooked me!
After 4 years of coaching, networking, and this result, I got the chance to come to Barrington to teach and coach. The next year's result, garnered when I coached the Prairie team in my first year here, kind of made my new boss think I was a coaching genius, but I just got lucky with the kids handed to me, as evidenced by my zero appearances at state with 5 extremely talented Station teams.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Youse Da Force »

Bob Kilner , our coach, visited our middle school "gifted" program, and ran a match in each class. I did very well (on easy questions...), enough that he tried to get me to join that year (8th grade), but I thought it would be awkward and weird, since I wasn't a high-schooler, so I always said I couldn't go. Next year, I joined.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

I got into it in like 5th grade, when my gifted teacher would pull out the buzzers occasionally to quiz us. Then came MATHCOUNTS, speedcheck Kansas high school stuff, and KMO. I got into it in college kind of by luck, when I randomly ran into Jerry in the mailroom.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

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I'd been friends with most of the freshmen on the team the year prior (I didn't join anything in my first year) and they convinced me to start going to practices around halfway into 2nd quarter of my sophomore year. They stuck me on the C team with another new girl and we did pretty well (more that she did -- she later got bumped to A). After that, I never really left.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by MLafer »

I remember in 9th grade my US History teacher noted that I knew a lot of "useless" info so she brought me over to W.S. Beamon (history teacher at my school, Plymouth Salem, and probably one of the greatest figures in HSQB history) where we talked about quiz bowl a bit. I had no interest at the time because I had some grudge about doing extra-curricular activities.
Amusingly, I ended up joining the team in 11th grade because my dad wanted me to start an extra-curricular for college application padding.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat »

I got interested by watching QuizBusters, a local TV show. I would have completely missed out for a year or two, but I had a couple friends who actually read the the announcements that scrolled across the TV screen in some classrooms (I never paid much attention). Luckily for me, one of those friends thought I might be interested, and told me to come to the first practice. It didn't hurt that I recognized the advisor from Scouts, too.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by cdcarter »

My best friend was on the team, he dragged me to a practice, I had fun!
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by millionwaves »

It was kind of a big deal in my middle school to do it, but then in high school, our team pretty much bounced from one coach to another every year, so it was pretty hard to take seriously. I really got into it by randomly meeting a good friend of mine on ABT at a dorm trivia contest, and I haven't looked back, which I attribute to starting to practice while we were reading ACF Nationals questions.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by The Logic of Scientific Disco »

Wow, I had no idea there was so much middle school quiz bowl out there. I only got involved at the end of 10th grade--the quickly shrinking team at my high school held an intramural tournament, and a bunch of my friends and I formed a team and placed second. I think 4 out of the 8 people on the top two teams (including me, of course) ended up doing quiz bowl the next year.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

I'll join the middle school love fest. My middle school team was 7th/8th only, but at the end of their season (Aprilish) they held a couple practices for 6th graders as well, and announced them in the daily announcements.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by dtaylor4 »

Played in middle school as well. Matches were run by the high school team which my school fed into, and ran with it from there.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by pray for elves »

I attended an organizational meeting at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school after hearing about the club through a few acquaintances/friends.

Since people seem to be commenting on middle school quizbowl's existence, I only ever came into contact with middle school teams fleetingly, as a couple of tournaments I played at had a few teams from middle schools playing against the high schools, including one memorable neg for the opposing team (from a middle school) of "Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka" for Mendez v. Westminster right after "in California".
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by DumbJaques »

I attended an organizational meeting at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school after hearing about the club through a few acquaintances/friends.

Since people seem to be commenting on middle school quizbowl's existence, I only ever came into contact with middle school teams fleetingly, as a couple of tournaments I played at had a few teams from middle schools playing against the high schools, including one memorable neg for the opposing team (from a middle school) of "Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka" for Mendez v. Westminster right after "in California".
A middle school question on Mendez v. Westminster? That's my kind of tournament!

I started quizbowl towards the middle of my sophomore year, not really getting into it until after football was over. I'm surprised to here how many people had the experience of walking on and doing really well (or at least making the starting lineup). I sucked tremendously when I started playing (playing on the 1-4 RM D has pretty much been the high point of my qb career thus far) - I notably remember being really excited one day when I learned that Virgil wrote the Aeneid, only to go to practice that afternoon and promptly neg on a Seamus Heaney question that begin "his translation of the Aeneid," to which I proudly yelled "Virgil." To add horrible points, Seth Samelson was on my team and trying to buzz in with the correct answer. Seth, if you still read these boards, sorry dude, that must have sucked.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by CameronC »

As a ninth grader my Geography teacher was also the quizbowl coach and one day in class he set up the buzzers and the entire class played a practice game so he could recruit people. I went to my first JV practices, sat quietly in the Varsity practices in awe of the other players, and finally after everybody else stopped going to the JV practices I got the last stop on our first team. From there I steadily improved and was made captain of our JV and then Varsity teams, until this year when I was kicked off the team. We had a middle school team, but I never was a part of it.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by pray for elves »

DumbJaques wrote:
I attended an organizational meeting at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school after hearing about the club through a few acquaintances/friends.

Since people seem to be commenting on middle school quizbowl's existence, I only ever came into contact with middle school teams fleetingly, as a couple of tournaments I played at had a few teams from middle schools playing against the high schools, including one memorable neg for the opposing team (from a middle school) of "Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka" for Mendez v. Westminster right after "in California".
A middle school question on Mendez v. Westminster? That's my kind of tournament!
Maybe my phrasing wasn't clear enough, but it was a high school tournament with middle school teams playing in it. Still, Mendez v. Westminster is a challenging answer choice, and it went dead in most rooms from what I remember.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Kyle »

My one-time geography teammate Steven Young didn't respond to my emails during high school because he was spending so much of his time studying for quizbowl at Thomas Jefferson. I asked what quizbowl was and, after he explained it to me, I said it sounded like fun. Then I asked, half jokingly, if he would pay more attention to me if I started playing quizbowl, got really good, and beat him. He graduated before I got the chance to play him, but we played TJ three times at the HSNCT in 2005 — and lost.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Ford08 »

My sophomore year I was lifting weight for morning practice, I heard some buzzers going off so I thought I would check and see if there was something wrong, I find the Academic team practicing and had no idea what was going on. I went and told my basketball coach I was done lifting and went to the practice, I answered 3 questions in 5 minutes against an all stater and the team that eventually went to state, after that the coach made me come every day afterward, I secretly loved it after that I never missed a practice. So it was by total accident.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I'm another of those totally by accident types of players. When I was a freshman I was doing something to piss off a kid who was in orchestra with me so I followed him in to quizbowl practice and when I found out it was quizbowl I figured "what the hell, I'll sit down and try playing" and ended up beating the then A-team pretty soundly (I found out later that they were one of the worst teams in the state, so it wasn't something at all impressive to beat them) but I was similarly hooked after that.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Tegan »

My senior year at UIUC, a friend convinced to accompany him to an open tryout test for the ABT. I made it, and he didn't, but I stuck with it. The team was a far shadow of what the team is like today, and was a mix of these snobby humanities types that looked down their noses at someone in the "sciences".

While driving to U of Minnesota for a tournament one of the guys pulled out a ginormous binder of study lists. I asked where he got them, and he said that he got them from his high school coach.

"You mean, they play this in high school?" My school never had a team

Right there, I knew I was getting into this somehow, someway.

Ironically, two of my former high school teachers are now coaches at different schools. If only they had started this when I was there.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by harpersferry »

Supposedly, in my eighth grade year, our principal signed the school up with the IESA to do scholastic bowl. So he dumped off the responsibility of forming a team onto some gifted teachers. They held an open tryout and we had maybe 40 people go out for 14 spots. After Siva, Michael, and I along with other people who don't still play, made the team, we beat up on some Catholic schools in the area and then went on to win State. It was mostly an accident, but we did practice pretty hard for a middle school team. We also played exhibition matches against the F/S B team at Auburn and a group of our teachers' children assembled for the purpose of beating us. I look back now and realize that we really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but winning state does a lot to get you interested in an activity.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Manyo2 »

In Kentucky, we actually have elementary school quiz bowl. Since I started in 4th grade, I've actually been playing some form of this game for 11 years consecutively now, despite only being a sophomore in college. My primary 4th grade teacher was the coach, and got everybody in that grade to at least give it a shot. I did pretty well initially and a bunch of my friends did it, so I was hooked.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by the return of AHAN »

pasedpawn wrote:We also played exhibition matches against the F/S B team at Auburn
Wow. You just confessed to breaking IESA by-laws en route to winning 2 of their state championship trophies.
IESA wrote: 2.081 Member schools may permit eligible students to participate in interscholastic activities as school representatives
pursuant with the following:
Schools which are members of this Association.
Illinois elementary attendance centers containing any of the grades five through eight which are not
members of this Association.
Non-Illinois elementary attendance centers in states adjacent to Illinois which contain any of the grades five
through eight. Member schools on the Illinois borders should indicate on schedules whenever a school is
outside Illinois.
2.082 Member schools may not permit students to participate as school representatives in interscholastic activities with high
school or non-school groups. Please check with the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) regarding their policy on
high school students practicing with students in grades 5-8.
2.083 Member schools are not allowed to practice against other schools or allow students from their own school to practice
with a different school.
I'd keep that under your hat if I were you.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Followed a cute girl into practice about halfway through my sophomore year. Ended up answering a few questions. Went to a tournament, answered a few questions - including tossup twenty of three consecutive matches. Won tournament. Waited a couple of years, asked cute girl out. Continued answering a few questions.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Tegan »

BarringtonJP wrote:
pasedpawn wrote:We also played exhibition matches against the F/S B team at Auburn
Wow. You just confessed to breaking IESA by-laws en route to winning 2 of their state championship trophies.
That's also an IHSA no-no ... among the many, many, MANY IHSA no-nos.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by sabine01 »

Was kinda "thrown" onto a team in 5th grade (membership were determined by highest individual scores on "preliminary round" disks). In 1990, this team ultimately placed 2nd at Academic Enterprises' tournament for elementrary/middle schoolers: The National All-Star Competition.

Liked it and stuck with it (over the years also participating in stuff like the National Geographic Geography Bee and Quest).

As most of us know, I'm better at certain aspects of the game than others nowadays, but I also much prefer assisting with the administrative side of things.
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The Infanta
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by The Infanta »

It was my second week of freshman year. I had Bro. Nigel for Earth Science first period and he began talking to our class about the two clubs he moderates, namely Science Olympiad and Academic Quiz Bowl. I tuned out his SO pitch, but when he started describing quizbowl, I was interested. Then he whipped out the NAQT You Gotta Know Lit list and said, "Let's see who can name these authors." He asked us the easy ones first, like Romeo and Juliet and Huckleberry Finn, but then progressed onto The Scarlet Letter and The Canterbury Tales. My hand shot up for each of them and I got them all right. When the bell rang, he approached me, shook my hand, and asked me if I was interested in taking the qualifying test (made up of KMO questions and :chip: bits). I did, was the top freshman, did okay on the trial buzzer round, started going to tourneys, became friends with the best people in the world, and I've been the token team Lit girl ever since.


P.S. - If I had gone to the Latin School, which is our middle school attached to the high school, I would've taken part in the middle school nostalgia.
Marisol Brady (they/them)
Kellenberg Memorial HS '09
University of Delaware '1X
harpersferry
Wakka
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by harpersferry »

BarringtonJP wrote:
pasedpawn wrote:We also played exhibition matches against the F/S B team at Auburn
Wow. You just confessed to breaking IESA by-laws en route to winning 2 of their state championship trophies.
IESA wrote: 2.081 Member schools may permit eligible students to participate in interscholastic activities as school representatives
pursuant with the following:
Schools which are members of this Association.
Illinois elementary attendance centers containing any of the grades five through eight which are not
members of this Association.
Non-Illinois elementary attendance centers in states adjacent to Illinois which contain any of the grades five
through eight. Member schools on the Illinois borders should indicate on schedules whenever a school is
outside Illinois.
2.082 Member schools may not permit students to participate as school representatives in interscholastic activities with high
school or non-school groups. Please check with the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) regarding their policy on
high school students practicing with students in grades 5-8.
2.083 Member schools are not allowed to practice against other schools or allow students from their own school to practice
with a different school.
I'd keep that under your hat if I were you.
Wow. I never knew that. How ridiculous. "Let's discourage healthy development of young players" When will they figure out that we don't play football, and as such do not need to be limited in playing time (18 dates) and/or who we can practice/play against?
sorry for hijacking the thread on this one.
John Brown
Rockford Auburn '08
Indiana University '12
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Matt Weiner
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Matt Weiner »

pasedpawn wrote:When will they figure out that we don't play football, and as such do not need to be limited in playing time (18 dates) and/or who we can practice/play against?
When quizbowl isn't run by football coaches.
Matt Weiner
Advisor to Quizbowl at Virginia Commonwealth University / Founder of hsquizbowl.org
Tegan
Coach of AHAN Jr.
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Tegan »

Matt Weiner wrote:When quizbowl isn't run by people who want to do whatever they can to limit the potential success of teams who are interested in working for what they earn, rather than hoping to land backasswards into the sheer luck of an easy sectional comprised of teams who don't give a rats tail.
Corrected ..... football coaches as a whole respect the teams who work hard ..... the issue here is geography, not so much sports.

Sadly, I ran over here hoping to hear how Matt first got involved.
catsasslippers
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by catsasslippers »

I had no idea a quizbowl team existed at my school, but I had rather pathetic crush on Doug my Sophomore year. I followed Doug to practice mainly so that I could hang out with him, but I never left. So thank you Doug for ignoring me just enough to keep me coming back until I followed you to quizbowl practice.
"... but not so if you're a structuralist! You're happy. You're french. You're very good looking. Very overpaid." - Sandra Blakely
Nina Charap
Stuyvesant High School '08
Emory University '12
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No Sollositing On Premise
Tidus
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by No Sollositing On Premise »

One of my neighbors growing up was the Brady family - Matt Brady was on the TJ It's Ac team with the notorious Andy Goss in the late 90s. I saw Matt play on TV when I was in elementary school or middle school, and thought that it would be really cool to do it in high school. So freshman year I went to the first interest meeting, and I was one of three freshmen (the least talented out of myself, Mike Wright, and Steve Young) that became the core of the TJ 2004 class.
Mike Sollosi, University of Virginia
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The Goffman Prophecies
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by The Goffman Prophecies »

I got my start in 7th grade, where we had a grade-wide activity involving some mock rounds in the local regional qb format - in southwestern Virginia, it was (and still is) called [url=http://macc_and_swac.tripod.com/]MACC[/url]. The format plays different rounds in different subject areas (English, Math, Science, Social Studies) as well as an All-Around competition. We formed teams of four among the students, and I played on one of the social studies teams and dominated. The teachers took notice, and I was introduced to the coach of the actual social studies squad, who had a special exemption granted for me to play as a 7th grader (normally only grades 8-12 are allowed to compete). I played all through my high school career; in my senior year during the tournament, we finally defeated the only team that was consistently better than us.

The VHSL Scholastic Bowl activity was just in its beginning stages during my junior and senior years. In Region C, the coordinators decided to have us compete using pencil-and-paper tests, and we never did well. After I graduation, the format changed and another player led my school to a state title in 2003.

There was a several-year break between high school and college, and I guess you could say I re-discovered quizbowl after seeing a post Dan Greenstein made on Livejournal advertising the Maryland AQT. I think it's the one thing that kept me sane for my two years in College Park.
Dan Goff
HSQB sysadmin

Virginia Tech '13
South Carolina '15
and a couple other places
Not Thomas Dale HS

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Nine-Tenths Ideas
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

At the open house for 8th graders, the Academic team is sequestered off in some room upstairs, but I managed to find it in the last 5 minutes of the open house. I answered a question right and decided to come back. And I did.

Not a great story, I guess.
Isaac Hirsch
University of Maryland '14
Never Gonna Play Again
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Auroni
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Auroni »

A whole bunch of my friends were in it my freshman year, but I stupidly decided that I wouldn't have time for it (I actually didn't have any ECs that year, so wtf.) Then I decided I'd give it a try sophomore year, and have pushed everything else aside and been a part ever since.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
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Terrible Shorts Depot
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

My mom was perusing the school webpage at the very beginning of my freshman year, and she saw an announcement for quiz bowl tryouts. She read the description and thought that I would be good at it, and thus, "suggested" that I go. The rest is history....
Charlie Rosenthal
Shady Side Academy '09
Carleton College '13
University of Pennsylvania '18
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Lukey's Boat
Lulu
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Lukey's Boat »

Peer pressure!

...well, partly. I started watching our local quiz show, Quiz Busters, when I was really, really little. I kind of forgot about it for a while, then my sophomore year of high school, someone in my chemistry class whom I had never met but who was on quiz bowl told me I should try it, and pestered me until I did. I went to a few practices and loved it - the rest is history. :grin:

As a side note, that kid in my chem class turned out to be Kurtis. So that's interesting.
Liz F.
Michigan Technological University
Formerly East Lansing H.S.
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Madoc
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Madoc »

In 8th grade, my World Geography teacher (the Quizbowl team coach. Our high school goes from 8th-12th grade) would talk about his team, how far they had made it that year, and so on. After I showed a large wealth of raw knowledge in Geography, he asked me if I would be interested my freshman year on joining the team. I was, so I showed up to the tryouts. I didn't do so hot on the tryout test, but I did do just hot enough to outscore the other freshman hopefuls (I think I got 7/50... or maybe it was 17/50). After he actually gave us material to study for, my score on his second tryout test went up drastically. He picked me up, and only me. Regardless, he still gave me the 'Rookie of the Year' award :lol:
Charlie Perkins
Coach - Honaker High School 2015-2021
W&M 2014
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Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

What thinking coach doesn't allow kids on their team because they didn't do that great on a test.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
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OctagonJoe
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Re: What got you into Quizbowl?

Post by OctagonJoe »

Wayzata had "tryouts" one year, but it was basically to root out the "undesirables" so our coach wouldn't have to deal with them. I think 24 kids "tried out" and 22 "made the team".
Carsten Gehring
Wayzata HS '08 | Carleton College '12 | Denver Publishing Institute '12
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