In a quiet classroom with nothing but a buzzer, Woodland’s Quiz Bowl Team prepares for their next competition. The Quiz Bowl team utilizes a buzzer system in which each person on both teams recieves a buzzer and the first person to buzz in answers the question. Quiz Bowl toss-up questions are long, typically a paragraph or two. When a contestant answers the question correctly, he or she earns ten points for their team. Answering quickly, within a sentence or two, earns them “power.” Power is worth fifteen points instead of the usual ten.

“It is better to answer questions quickly even if you are not one-hundred percent sure of the answer to try to get power,” Brian O’Connell stated.

If a team answers the toss-up correctly, the team gets a series of three shorter bonus questions worth ten points each.

The team practices every Tuesday and Friday after school in Nancy “Momma” Manning’s room to prepare for tournaments. Members of the team also practice outside of school all year long. They practice on a website called “Protobowl” that fires practice questions at them and practice questions from past competitions.

The “A” team consists of O’Connell, Evan Lin, and Kenneth Arnold, who split up categories of questions for everyone to master in order to give them the best chance at success. The team works well with each other with O’Connell in science, Lin specializing in literature, and Arnold specializing in art and mythology.

At a recent competition, the Island Cup, the Quiz Bowl team took fourth place which qualifies them for two national tournaments. The team continues to fine tune their skills for these national tournaments and Arnold hopes for great success in the future.

“The team practices hard every day in order to achieve our goal of placing high in nationals.”