On April 9, the Lakota West Quiz team participated in Regionals at Walnut Hills High School.
This competition was the culmination of a great season: The 21-22 Lakota West Academic Team finished the regular season with 15 wins and only 3 losses, making them the most successful quiz team at the competition in Lakota West history.
Getting to Regionals was a little bit nerve-wracking. According to Ms. Cockrell, the quiz team advisor, “ the team battled through all three rounds [of the GMC Tournament] just to find themselves caught up in a three-way tie with both Sycamore and Fairfield, [leaving our team to] feeling let down.” This left the judging panel to review the tie-breaking rules — suspense continued to build among the quiz team members. Once the tie-breaking rules had been reviewed it was found that The Lakota West Firebirds had officially gotten their 1st ever GMC Tournament win, and would be moving on in the competition to the Regional Championship Game!”
Going to Regionals was an exciting experience. Senior Ryan Sippy shared that “It was incredibly humbling, to get to be a part of the regional tournament. The experience overall as a whole was absolutely amazing. It was so worth it. Of all The Quiz Teams in the area there are only 16 teams actually get to go to the Regionals. To say I was on one of those teams means so much, then to have continued on and finished that tournament in 2nd place. The experience as a whole has been amazing, I couldn’t ask for anything better than to end our season, and NO…I never dreamed we would make it to the Regional Tournament, and never expected we’d place 2nd at it for sure!”
Some of you might want to know what the Quoz team actually does. Quiz Team is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for which players practice and can then represent their school at varsity tournaments, like the one they competed in this past weekend. However, Quiz Team students do not have to compete on a large scale, they may choose to participate only in weekly in-school competitions.
In order to prepare, junior Seth Pulsford explained that “Typically, we prepare for competitions by scrimmaging in practice. Sometimes we will practice other specific skills, such as confidence and speed in choosing to answer.”
The Ohio Academic Competition involves 3 rounds of different types of quizzes. According to Cockrell, “The first round is the category round, in which each team is asked a question and then there is a toss-up, with the points going to the team who can answer fastest. The categories are Literature, Science, Fine Arts, Math, Geography, History, and Government/Economics. After that follows an alphabet round when teams are given the same 20 written questions whose answers will all begin with the letter at the top of the paper. The teams have 4 minutes to collaborate on these questions. The final round is 20 toss-up questions.”
Quiz team members enjoy being part of this team in no small part because “It gave them the opportunity to meet others that have very similar interests as they do. “
After speaking with the 2nd place Lakota West Quiz Team I have a much greater understanding of what they would call Their Sport. I found that the quiz team is just as exciting and competitive as any other team the school has. The Quiz Team is much like baseball, basketball, or even football, they just use their brain to compete rather than a ball!
There were a lot of seniors on this year’s team and the quiz team is already on the hunt for new players for their team next year!” You can find out how to sign up and be a part of The Quiz team, by paying attention to the announcements at the beginning of the year for dates and times.
If you have any further questions you can email [email protected].
