A Brief History of Lehigh College (and Quiz) Bowl

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Hi! I am rather crazy about keeping digital archives about my club's history in college bowl and more recently in quizbowl. Using our 130 year old digitzed archive of our student newspaper, I went through and compiled a brief but also fascinating history of our club from 1958 to present day.

My most fascinating observation was the size of our intramural tournaments. 140 people?!? We had 7 at practice on Tuesday.

Thinking this info might also make a good QBWiki page. I never made one before but it could be nice to put the info there too.

Without further ado, and with most names removed unless relevant, here is the story of Lehigh College Bowl/Quizbowl:

1958-59: College Bowl appearance against Oberlin, won first game and then lost to Fordham.

1969-70: College Bowl appearance, Paul Levy ‘69 as captain. Coach Dr. Jack DeBellis (associate prof, English). 285-75 win in game 1 against Penn and won five straight, proclaiming themselves as one of 33 undefeated champions in 11 years. Fan bus of students went to game two against Montana. DeBellis would proceed to be the guest speaker at freshman convocation the next year. Parade held on campus during halftime of the Gettysburg-Lehigh football game. Second celebration of the team held in front of crowd of 2,000+ during parents weekend. In the 1980s, DeBellis would reveal in an interview that the prize money won would help set up Lehigh’s first scholarship primarily for Black engineers.

1977-78: Temporary head coach Jeff Gordon. Players Tom Wilson ‘77, Doug Wilson ‘78 and Bob Wilson ‘78 (only Doug and Bob related). Won an open tournament composed of teams between ages of 14-50, the third annual East Pennsylvania Trivia Contest.

1979-80: Jack DeBellis returns to the team as coach and hosts a 18-team intramural tournament with the top four individual scorers comprising the team that was supposed to be sent to a national tournament. One intramural team from a fraternity showed up to their games wearing caps and gowns covered in Christmas lights. Unknown if team ever made it.

1980-81: Robert Cohen succeeds DeBellis as the head coach of Lehigh College Bowl with DeBellis staying on staff. Lehigh hosts a tournament for Moravian, Muhlenburg, Marywood, and Lafayette. Team lost by tight margins in multiple rounds at sectional tournament at Maryland where team won sportsmanship award. Intramural tournament had 36 teams and 144 students.

1981-82: Robert Goldman ‘83 becomes captain, 32 team intramural tournament, Lehigh finishes 2nd out of 16 at regionals at Moravian but does not qualify for nationals. Team satirically an advertisement for a new coach and lists qualifications as “Be ignorant of Canadian horse races, Buy us purple buzzers, Don’t be a hoser.”

1982-83: Lehigh qualifies for national tournament in Atlanta after second place finish at Maryland regional and won another sportsmanship award. Goldman ‘83 as captain, joined with future captains Bill Oldach ‘84, Lisette Barnes ‘85. Professors vs. students match to raise money. Lehigh finishes 14th and was first out of Pennsylvanian schools.

1983-84: Lehigh finishes second to Maryland once again at regionals on the last tossup. Bill Oldach compared playing Maryland in 80s College Bowl to playing Nebraska in football. Over 140 students and 35 teams compete in intramural competition but Lehigh does not qualify for nationals. Lehigh holds an intramural sports trivia bowl on top of their normal intramural competition.

2020-21: Lehigh returns as a program to ACF Fall. Plays in three tournaments

2021-22: Lehigh qualifies for national tournament for first time in nearly 40 years when they qualify for DII ICT. Finish 26th in the field and went 5-8 after finishing fourth at SCT.

2022-23: Lehigh played one tournament

2023-24: Lehigh set to play in ACF Fall