By Jennifer ChenThe Daily Northwestern
The Northwestern Quiz Bowl team is quiet as it scrimmages. The moderator glances at both sides, then back down at the binder of sample questions the team goes through every practice. Someone will answer. He waits.
Concentration manifests differently on each face. One sits stoic, another fidgets, grimacing and fanning her hands impatiently, as if she is very close to the answer and knows it. Two stare at the carpet, one at the beat-up, outmoded buzzer – a Quiz Bowl heirloom – in his hand.
Suddenly: Ding!
“The superposition principle.”
“Yes! That is correct.”
The other members moan in realization. “Ohhh.” They knew that.
More than 50 years old, NU Quiz Bowl is one of the longest-lasting collegiate teams in the college Quiz Bowl circuit, said club president Rebecca Fischer, a Weinberg sophomore. The team has gone to Nationals the past two years, and this season, with new leadership and new members replacing the graduated squad, the team is fighting to make it three years in a row.
The first step toward another regional championship was Saturday’s novice tournament at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. It was the team’s first competition of the year. Quizzing against a dozen other university teams in the Midwest, NU’s A-team finished 5-4 and the B-team 3-6, while Weinberg junior Andrew Solomon was the tournament’s second-highest individual scorer.
NU Quiz Bowl did not do as well as Fischer expected, but the Macalester tournament was still a good start to the year, she said.
The team size varies between 20 to 30 members, with a core of 10 that regularly trains and competes. Nighttime practices are once a week in Kresge Hall classrooms. The students line up the desks, set up their ancient buzzer system and crack open the questions binder. And they start the scrimmage.
But with the laughter, playful banter and blunt, incredulous comments at the more left-field questions – they can just as easily be about Russian tsars as Dilbert comic characters – quiz bowlers seem to love their mix of fact and fun.
“A lot of the time you take electives and there’s not a lot you’re going to be using in real life, so (Quiz Bowl) is like a way to apply that knowledge,” she said.
Tournaments are a little different. With timers ticking, buzzers sounding and only seconds to think, quiz competitions are intense and mentally taxing, members said.
“You’re on a wire,” said Weinberg sophomore Dillon Clausner, who competed Saturday. “You’ll be sweating on the buzzer, and if it’s really close… You really have to do it to know.”
Reach Jennifer Chen at [email protected].
