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On May 25th, AISG’s Quiz Bowl Team went to Atlanta, Georgia for the High School National Championship Tournament. This is the first time for both our school and our team to have gone to a Quiz Bowl National Championship. The reason that our Quiz Bowl Team, The Perspicacious Rams, had the chance to qualify is because of their victory at the Brent Invitational earlier this year. It was overall, quite an unique experience for all.
The HSNCT was attended by our Quiz Bowl A team, which is composed of me, Jacky Liu (junior) the captain of the team, Caroline Mao (junior), Stanley Wang (Sophomore), Martin Kim (Sophomore), Jennifer Yang (Freshmen) and Henry Wang (Freshmen). Along with the Quiz Bowl team, there was also our coach Mr. Andrew Sinclair and our chaperone Ms. Anne Martin-Bauer.
The tournament is about 3 days long. On day 1, it’s the scrimmage for teams to practice as well as to socialize. On day 2, the tournament officially begins with play off. On Day 3, those who made it through the play off stay and play for the championship position while those who lost played consolation rounds.
For us, we arrived pretty early, so before the scrimmage, we tried to relax and enjoy the beautiful city of Atlanta by visiting the Coca Cola Museum and dine at one of the best restaurant in Atlanta recommended by Mr. McGartlin.
In the museum, the Quiz team had a great time learning about the history behind the 130 year old brand as well as enjoy the amazing exhibits. The best part about the museum was the free tastings. At the end of the museum, there was a room full of most of the flavors of Coca Cola drinks from all around the world. In there, we tasted coke from Tanzania, sprite from France, Fanta from Japan, etc. After the coke museum, the Quiz team went to the restaurant recommended by Mr. McGartlin and had some of the best cuisine Atlanta has to offer.
Later that day, scrimmage started. In the scrimmage, we played against some great teams and despite our effort, we lost to many of them. However, the scrimmage did not kill our confidence and our passion! We got as much sleep as we could and then we prepared for the play offs.
In the first round of the play offs, we were shocked as we discovered that we are playing against the third place of last year’s tournament, Ithaca. Despite our best effort, we were beaten with the score of AISG: 80, Ithaca: 535. As Stanley Wang said after the tournaments, “They are very good. But we played really well against them, we got some powers and we did really well on the bonus. However, I did get a neg for answering vegan when the answer is ‘putting pineapple on pizza’, overall, it was pretty cool to play against such a powerful team.” We were all shocked at our beginning, however, the losses did not affect us too much. In the end, despite our losses, we tried our best, we had fun and won 3 games out of 10. Sadly we lost the tournament and got eliminated from the play offs. In the tournament, we also learned a lot and met a lot of new people includes players from other schools, coaches, moderators and even scorekeepers.
After the play off, we all went to watch the robot vs. people segment of the tournament. It’s a huge part of HSNCT where a computer programmed player plays against 4 of the best human players that were invited. After watching it, Caroline Mao said, “I was really excited to see this. It was definitely one of the coolest thing that I have ever seen in my life! The computer, Quanta won, of course, however, the scores were pretty close.” On day 3, we played the consolation round and then watched the semi-final and the finals. The consolation rounds were not as exciting as the previous ones since we were split into two teams instead of playing as one. Stanley Wang said after the consolation rounds, “It was fun and surprising. Some of them are really good and should deserve to be in the play off!” Also on day 3, we found out our ranking and we were ranked 297 out of 304.
In the nationals, one of the coolest thing that happened to us was when the NAQT, National Academic Quiz Tournament, tweeted about us. In their official Twitter account, they tweeted, “AISG great with American pop culture. It’s in their name, I guess.” and “AISG unfortunately negging many questions. They’re great at lit, though!”
Our experience there was quite unique and quite interesting. Jennifer Yang said, “This tournament is certainly one that I will remember for a long time. I don’t think it really hit me that we were going to one of the biggest, if not the biggest Quiz Bowl event in the world until we were sitting through our first scrimmage match and losing by hundreds of points. While we did not win very often, I felt that I did gain much more motivation to try harder and prepare more for our next tournaments. All of the people from the other schools had differing opinions and backgrounds, and I’m pretty sure I shook more hands in those two days than I have in my entire life. Despite losing and place 279th, I had a great time. Attending this tournament, even though it was during a very busy time, is something that I do not regret doing. I wasn’t very sure before, but now I am much more willing to dedicate more of my time into this activity, after seeing so many other people who have done the same on the other side of the world. This tournament was a very exhausting but enjoyable experience!”
With the motivation and experience gained from this tournament, the Quiz team are more dedicated than ever and plan on going to more tournaments next year, including HSNCT!
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