The Timber Creek Quizbowl team has had an outstanding 2021 season, including winning the title of “Orange County Quizbowl Champions.”
By Madelyn Lopez
This year, Timber Creek High School’s Quizbowl team has gained a new impressive team, with an even more impressive 2021 season. With a nearly perfect win to loss ratio, TC is the team to beat.
For those of you who don’t know about Quizbowl, think of collaborative “Jeopardy!” Schools compete against each other in groups of 5, in 5 categories: English, math, science, social studies, and humanities. All questions are derived from something you could learn in a class at school. In the actual competitions, you have 20 seconds to buzz in and answer the question – you gain points for correct answers, lose points for incorrect answers, and no penalty for no answer. The first round is made up of 5 point, single-part questions, and the second round is made up of 10 point, multi-part questions. By the end of the rounds, you compare your scores with other teams and a winner is decided!
In the beginning of the 2021 season, Timber Creek’s goals were set low, and when the team realized that most of the 2020 team were seniors who have now graduated, spirits significantly went down. The team wondered whether or not they could even hold successful tryouts. “Quiz Bowl hasn’t had much traction in the past. I was hoping to just have a team at all this year! That changed once we had tryouts,” said Jeevika Stetzer, co-captain of the team.
Once tryouts occurred, and an entire room was packed full of people interested in joining, the team finally had hope again. To have a successful Quizbowl team, it is important you have the perfect set of teammates, and Timber Creek’s Quizbowl tryouts are made to get an understanding of every person’s trivia strengths and weaknesses. Through the testing session, they are able to assess whether or not someone would be a good fit for the team and why. Thanks to the immense interest and support, the team ended up finding the right 13 people for the team.
Once the team was finalized, TC Quizbowl got to work and spent their time mastering their individual subjects. They are able to make sure that the competition run-throughs consist of challenging questions curated by the team, and even have their own Quizbowl sessions after school to prepare for competitions. Soon, they were able to put their preparation to work. With an outstanding 7 wins and 3 losses total from the preliminaries, they were able to move on and compete at the County Championships as a truly formidable opponent against some of the best schools in the area. The first two of three total games went fairly smoothly for Timber Creek, but in the finals against Trinity Prep, things started to get tense. “We were neck and neck the entire game. It could have easily gone either way,” said Stetzer. With things so close, the entire team was on edge. The match ended with 2 challenged questions, meaning that the players disputed the correct answer that was listed. Depending on whether one, both, or neither of the challenges were accepted, it could ultimately change who would win the game. After the challenges were resolved, it was confirmed that Timber Creek won and they were named Orange County Quizbowl Champions.
After winning, the team looks back on this season and hopes to put the same effort and energy into next year’s season. They hope to have the same success, and have even more fun! “My time at Quiz Bowl this past year was the most fun I’d ever had at a club, and to be able to obtain 1st place in that incredible playoff match was unreal. I think more than anything, I’m really thankful for the people I met and the friends I got closer with through the team. Can’t wait to do it all again next year!” said Ramsey Makan, co-captain of the team.
Quizbowl has become an accomplished and well-known club this year and they would like to keep it that way! Looking into wanting to try-out for the next season? Follow or send a message to @TCquizbowl on Instagram for more information about upcoming events, try-outs and interest meetings!
