Stevenson Quiz Bowl Team named state champs
Adlai Stevenson High School was selected as the National Academic Quiz Tournaments High School Team of the Week for the week of Feb. 11.
The team, consisting of seniors Nathan Cha and Ali Saeed, junior Deepak Moparthi, and freshman Govind Prabhakar, won the 2017 Illinois State Championship Tournament held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Feb. 11.
Coach Ryan Fedewa was "incredibly proud of these guys," and called them "a great bunch: they constantly shake each others' hands and say 'good man' when one of them has a great buzz - or 'naughty man' when they neg."
Fedewa is amused with how Saeed and Cha constantly make fun of each other, and with Moparthi's and Prabhakar's rivalry over who can buzz in fastest on questions related to Hinduism.
Tournament director Mike Sorice "really liked their team dynamic" and called Stevenson "a joy to read to." He was particularly impressed with the team's resilience: they rallied effectively in the finals series against Barrington.
Even after losing the first game, they "didn't seem to carry any of that negativity" into the next two games.
With a record of 12 wins and one loss, the Stevenson team qualified for the High School National Championship Tournament, which will be held in Atlanta in late May.
Quiz bowl is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for teams of four students. Quiz bowl teams use buzzers to answer questions about science, math, history, literature, mythology, geography, social science, current events, sports, and popular culture.
The matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration, since no individual player is likely to be an expert in all subject areas. Participation in quiz bowl both reinforces lessons from the classroom and encourages players to develop new intellectual interests.
National Academic Quiz Tournaments, founded in 1996, organizes the premier middle school, high school, and college quiz bowl championships in North America. In addition to its national championships, NAQT provides questions to invitational tournaments, league championships, and television shows throughout the year.
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