Competing in academic trivia, Quiz Bowlers hosted a tournament on October 5th, 2024, at Cinco Ranch High School.

“We practice [and] compete in academic tournaments with buzzer systems, just like Jeopardy,” Coach Diethrich said. “We compete in [and] around the area. We’ve gone out of town, and we also try to compete in Nationals, which is held in Atlanta every year.”

Cinco Ranch High School has made Nationals eight years out of the last nine years, thanks to its previous teams and their hard work.

“It’s not a lot of pop culture; it’s academic. History, science, and literature are the big categories,” Coach Diethrich said. “They also have things on mythology and religion … [but it’s] mostly academic.”

In Quiz Bowl, you can choose which topic you want to focus on and center practice around that topic.  Competitors often choose what topic appeals to them the most to learn and study for the tournaments. 

“Over time I tried out different topics and I [had] experience in tournaments and I found that I’m really good at those subjects and that I enjoy them,” Nina Coles said.

The students often test out different areas to see which ones work out best for them, such as Nina, who eventually ended up choosing literature and fine arts.

‘We like our kids to focus … on sub-areas,” Coach Diethrich said. “Usually your history guy also knows geography or government; your literature person usually knows mythology or stuff that’s tied into that [like] religion. [For] Science, math is a nice sub-category for that.”

The students are encouraged to have a more expansive knowledge of their areas and those around their chosen areas. This can help their teams answer more questions with better accuracy. 

 “We study a lot by reviewing old packets and also like databases with clues will come up,” Nina Coles said. 

Quiz Bowl is a competitive academic club where members attend tournaments and answer trivia questions in groups. The goal is to answer each question faster and correctly than the competing team.

“In practice usually either Coach Diethrich or the officers will tell us about important information that we need to know for upcoming tournaments and things like that,” Sophia Ghafoori said. “And then we’ll just practice; an officer or Mr. Diethrich will read out toss-ups for us and then we’ll practice just buzzing and answering.”

They have been practicing for tournaments by doing mock tournaments. They will study new material at home to prepare for any toss-ups they might receive during the tournaments. They practice these areas to help their team rise to the top and make Nationals. They worked hard to practice for their upcoming tournament last Saturday.

“My team was pretty prepared for it,” Sophia Ghafoori said. “Everyone did pretty good, they all got their subjects well. I think we could have communicated better between rounds.”

The Junior Varsity team placed tenth and continues to work harder and constantly improve.