Early Saturday morning on December 16, bleary-eyed students walked into Richard Montgomery’s cafeteria to begin setting up for high school’s version of Jeopardy. It was the day of RM’s largest-ever annual Quizbowl Novice Tournament, and the event kicked off with a free breakfast for all the incoming teams.

Teams came from all around the area to showcase their trivia knowledge and battle it out to win a trophy, and after breakfast and a brief welcoming ceremony, the competition began.

“Quizbowl is basically Trivia Crack but on a bigger and more extravagant level,” said sophomore Christine Zhu. “For tournaments, we play on teams where each team goes against another team every round, and the goal is to win by getting more points.”

In the morning, teams played five preliminary rounds against each other. During the lunch break, the highest-scoring individual students from the morning rounds were rewarded with books. Meanwhile, RM students worked feverishly to bracket the teams based on their morning performances, for five rounds of playoffs in the afternoon.

There were two divisions: a high school division of twenty-four teams, and a middle school division of twelve teams. The middle school division was a new addition—in the past, middle school teams would just compete against high schools in a single division, but this year, RM decided to separate them.

“Tournaments are a great way for the club to earn funds, but also to encourage other teams to gain experience,” said junior vice president Grant Yang. “Particularly at the novice tournament, new teams are given a chance to play where otherwise they’d likely be overshadowed by the varsity teams.”

In the high school division the eventual winner was a team from Montgomery Blair High School, while a team from Longfellow Middle School was triumphant in their own division.

Planning for the tournament began in the summer before the school year. “Hosting is a lot of work,” said senior Alythia Vo. “We have to claim dates, packets, tell Dr. Sparks, notify the school, find teams to join, make the brackets, sort out food, organize staffing, and more.”

Although the teacher sponsor of RM’s Quizbowl club, Dr. Wendy Sparks, helped out, the tournament was mostly student-run. Members of RM’s Quizbowl club assisted with reading questions, scorekeeping, and more, and the club president, senior Alex Hu, masterminded the entire arrangement. Even other schools provided extra buzzers and staffers, so the tournament could run smoothly.

“The tournament was larger than in years past, yet managed to still run smoothly thanks to excellent leadership and organization,” said senior Adam Howlett.

With all of the work that needed to be done, compared to playing in tournaments, hosting is a totally different experience.

“Hosting a tournament is definitely a lot more stressful, because a lot of things can go wrong,” said Grant Yang. “When you’re playing at a tournament, you just show up, compete, and leave, so you don’t know all of the logistics happening behind the scenes. When you’re hosting, you’ve got to keep track of the staff and buzzer sets in each room, input scores, deal with registration fees, and provide breakfast and lunch.”

Quizbowl is a unique club because it involves careful listening and expansive knowledge on a wide array of subjects. Questions often seem obscure or unnecessarily complicated, but it is a popular interscholastic event for a reason. The rigor and difficulty of the trivia provides students with a distinct sense of fulfillment that is unparalleled at any other club.

“It’s a place where you get rewarded for all the random things you’ve learned or read about throughout your life,” explained junior Daniel Yang, “and it’s something you can steadily improve at as long as you put in the work.”

“It’s a chance for me to learn for the sake of learning, rather than being associated with schoolwork and deadlines,” added Grant Yang. “Being in a team and showcasing what you’ve studied is extremely rewarding, and beating other teams is incredibly fun and exciting. I like to learn, I like to compete, and I like to improve.”

“A lot of people quit Quizbowl after the initial practices because it’s hard,” said Vo. “It’s not like Trivia Crack; it’s competitive. And it’s no fun losing, right? But if you stick with it and study really hard it’s really fun and you do get smarter.”