Afternoons post-school are filled with practices, commutes, meetings or the endless slog of homework. Yet, for those who attend the Quiz Bowl Club, much time is spent getting ready for competitions and learning simply for the sake of finding a new, fun fact.
The Quiz Bowl Club is made up of students who prepare weekly for various trivia competitions. And this year, for the first time, the club will attend Quiz Bowl Nationals in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend.
The Quiz Bowl team also competed in High School Quiz Show, a game show made by WGBH that features various high school Quiz Bowl teams from across Massachusetts. Teams complete a qualification test answering questions from different categories and the teams with the highest scores are invited to be featured on the show. This was the first year that the high school Quiz Bowl team was invited to participate and their episode aired on February 28.
Senior and co-president Adar Pfeffer said that the specific Quiz Bowl format of competition influences the way they practice for competition.
“[Quiz Bowl is] more about longer paragraph-y questions that start really obscure and get more into common knowledge as time goes on,” Pfeffer said. “So it rewards depth of knowledge more than just ‘Jeopardy!,’ which is actually a buzzer race. It’s basically a rhythm game.”
Senior and co-president Jack Avery said that the process of filming the show was a unique experience and the game show model encourages a faster game and more random questions. He also said that the experience was more of a friendly competition, rather than a cutthroat contest.
“We talked with the other team, we were playing against Belmont, and we kind of know everyone in the whole Massachusetts Quiz Bowl scene. So it was a very friendly thing. It wasn’t super competitive,” Avery said.
Recently, the Quiz Bowl Club held a club Trivia Showdown, during which 16 BHS clubs competed for a prize of donuts and bragging rights. Avery said that the event was a milestone success for the club.
“We wanted to reach out to the high school community and just have a fun event to connect people,” Avery said. “I felt that since trivia is such an accessible format, you don’t have to know any rules or have any specific talent, it’s something that anyone can just do, that it was a good choice to have different clubs compete against each other in.”
Senior Gabriel Knowles, who is the co-president of the Economics Club that won the Club Trivia Showdown, said that the experience helped him meet and connect with members from clubs he may not have gotten to know otherwise.
“I met a bunch of people from clubs I don’t think I would’ve ever thought to show up to and maybe now I’m interested in showing up to their club for a day and see what they do,” Knowles said. “It’s just cool to know that people from clubs all over the school still have similar interests, even though they might be in the Econ[omics] Club versus the Drama Club, we still have common interests and things we know about and are knowledgeable about.”
Trivia can not only bring people together, but it sparks a love of learning in participants, according to Pfeffer. He said that he has read books, such as “A Hundred Years of Solitude,” simply out of curiosity that arose from being involved in Quiz Bowl.
“I prefer this particular format, the long question, because it actually encourages you to learn things and not just know stuff about books that you haven’t read,” Pfeffer said. “Because you’re going to lose to the people who’ve actually read the book and remembered what happened, as an example, or the people who take classes on this stuff. So it encourages you to actually know what you’re talking about.”
Avery said that the club’s more relaxed nature allows for flexibility among club members and fills a need for casual clubs.
“We don’t take ourselves very seriously. You show up for the fun of it and then we do competitions and we can be serious about competitions but at the same time, we don’t take attendance or require people to sign up for things,” Avery said.
Pfeffer said that the club is a great place for anyone who is interested in learning or trivia at all, no matter their experience level, to try something new and meet new friends.
“I think it’s fun. I think you should try it out sometime. Show what you know,” Pfeffer said. “It’s also fine not to know anything and show up. Try to have a good time.”
