Middle School Students Test Smarts In Newly Formed Quiz Bowl Team

By Austin Deeks, 12th Grade

Quiz Bowl is all about, or that the Holy Cross Middle School has a stacked team that is competing in statewide Quiz Bowl tournaments. On a recent afternoon, I attended a practice to find out more about the team.

“To be or not to be is the Middle School question,” said Middle School Quiz Bowl moderator Mr. Hanemann. This year the Middle School Quiz Bowl team has competed in the Mount Carmel Quiz Bowl Tournament, the LSU Academic  Challenge, and the President’s tournament at Tulane University. Although the team has not won or placed in these events, there is a lot of potential on the team. And confidence. So much confidence that they would like to challenge the high school Quiz Bowl team.

Quiz Bowl tournaments consist of teams from all around Louisiana. At each matchup between two teams, there are three rounds: the toss-up, lightning, and lagniappe round. The toss-up round consists of questions on random subjects, and the first member of each team to raise their hand gets to answer the question. If the contestant answers correctly, their team gets the point. If the contestant is wrong, then the opposing team gets an opportunity to answer the question. After the toss-up is the lightning round, in which one team selects a subject for the opposing team. In this round, only the captains can answer the questions, but the teams can discuss the answer. The lagniappe round consists of a toss-up question, then four questions to the team who correctly answered the toss-up question. The four questions are related to the toss-up question.

One of the team’s biggest threats is 7^th grade captain Andrew Abadiel, who placed second at the President’s Individual Test at Mount Carmel Academy. Co-captain Douglas Bailey is also another name to know on the team when it comes to subjects such as history and fine arts. Bailey, a seventh grader, was the captain of one team when I attended their meeting and helped lead his team into an early lead in a scrimmage. The teams were composed of Bailey, Anthony Melancon III (5^th), Chris Bologna (7^th), and David Quade (5^th) against Donovan Harris (7^th), Blake Baldassaro (5^th), Alex Birdsall (7^th), and Paxton DeForest (7^th) (sixth grader David Englade was not at the meeting).

Donovan Harris is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to random trivia. Mr. Hanemann has dubbed Harris the “Randomizer” and his knowledge might rival that of senior Richard Dubus, a campus champion of random information. Seventh grader Chris Bologna’s strength is mythology.

The team will be well prepared for the Brother Martin Tournament on April 30. It is also clear that the team is having a great time while broadening their knowledge. When asked about his Quiz Bowl coaching philosophy, Mr. Hanemann replied, “Knowledge is power,” and, “The answer is in the question.”

Coach Arvites and Mrs. Clark better bring a full plate to the table, because Mr. Hanemann and the Middle School Quiz Bowl are hungry for an upset.

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Posted by Bulletin on Apr 18 2011. Filed under Academics, Extracurricular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry