The Jackson Prep Quiz Bowl team just fought the fight of its life. Last Friday, January 24th, Quiz Bowl took the day off of school to focus on the MAIS overall tournament, the kind of tournament that determines if your year of Bowling was a success, or if it’s time to put your hope in next year’s campaign. Quiz Bowlers were split up into two teams, A and B.
Team A was composed of Captain Charlie Penny, Henry Jordan, Jacob Pritchett, Sparks Grenfell, and Lindan Garner. Team B consisted of Captain Miriam Caballero, Timothy Fulcher, Michael Balfour, Vincent Sun, and Caleb Zhu.
Each room has two tables set up with four buzzers each. There are 20 toss-up questions where anyone can answer. Each team is only allowed one attempt at each toss-up question. If someone buzzes in before the question is over and gets it wrong, their team gets a five point deduction. Every toss-up question is worth ten points. When a player gets one right, their team gets a chance at bonus questions. These are three questions in the same category worth five points each. The team is allowed to discuss their answer, and the captain has the final say. The team has to get every preceding bonus right to keep getting opportunities.
The tournament featured two rounds of pool play before lunch. The top 16 teams by points moved on. Both Prep teams made it to the top sixteen. From there, teams were split into brackets of four. The Prep B team lost to the number one seed PCS. The Prep A team beat East Rankin C and Heritage to get a chance to try for revenge against PCS in the semis. They beat PCS in a close match and mentally prepared for the championship.
Lamar A and Prep A faced off in the championship. Both teams were mentally exhausted and playing their sixth game of quiz bowl in one day, but neither was giving up.
The final round was still close around halftime, but by question 18, Prep had sealed the win and was already thinking about how they would celebrate. An excited Charlie Penny spoke about winning the state championship: ““””We did it!!”- Kevin Garnett” – Jayson Tatum” – Charlie Penny”
