CHS Press Release
Quiz Bowl Season:
This year, Carbon participated in a total of seven tournaments. Five of them were held by the South Eastern Service Center (SESC) as local competitions and the other two were National competitions: the 3-2-1 QUnlimited Fall Tournament and the National Geography Challenge.
Carbon had one Varsity team this year.
Throughout the Quiz Bowl season, our varsity team has performed consistently well. They placed in the top three teams in all of the local competitions put on by SESC. Although they never took first place in their competitions, they performed well enough in all of their tournaments to be noticed on the national level and receive a Wild Card invitation entry by QUnlimited, which is the organization that hosts the National Academic Championship.
Carbon had two JV teams this year.
Both JV teams have been some of the most competitive teams that Carbon has seen in awhile! Each team has taken first in one of the local tournaments put on by SESC. Our JV A team took first in their division at the Emery Invitational held at Emery High School. They went undefeated in the double elimination tournament until the championship, where they had to battle against Emery’s JV B team for two matches, resulting in Carbon taking the win. Our JV B team also took first in their division at the Carbon Invitational held at Carbon High. The JV B team lost its first match in the bracket to Green River’s JV Team. However, they battled their way through the loser’s bracket to make it all the way to the championship match against San Juan. They ended up beating San Juan’s team two times in a row to take the championship!
Nationals:
In order to qualify for the National Academic Championship, a Varsity team has to place in the top 15% of teams in any local tournaments while a JV team has to place in the top 25%. With Quiz Bowl not being too big of an extracurricular in Utah (yet!), this requires our teams to win any of the local tournaments to qualify for Nationals. Due to both JV teams winning a tournament, they automatically qualified. With the Varsity team not winning a tournament, they had to apply for a Wild Card entry into the tournament, which they were granted! This means that we get to take all three of our teams to New Orleans this year to compete.
The New Orleans portion of the competition will take place over Memorial Day weekend. Our students will attend their final day of school on Thursday, May 23 and then fly out the next morning to compete.
The National Academic Championship consists of two parts: Preliminaries and Playoffs. In the Preliminary rounds, all qualified teams will play six matches. Any teams that win four or more of the six matches will advance to the playoffs portion of the tournament. This portion will consist of a single elimination bracket, resulting in crowning the National Champion team.
Comments:
Last year, Carbon took a Varsity and a JV team to New Orleans to compete in the National Academic Championship for the first time in person. We were the first high school to represent the state of Utah at the National Academic Championships last year and are proud to have that distinction. Both of our teams won three out of the six matches, so they didn’t advance to playoffs, but that set them on a path to get farther in the NAC this upcoming year. Our teams have been balancing their schoolwork, extracurricular and work schedules to set time aside in practicing for the NAC this year.
With our performance last year, we were able to recruit some more students to grow our team this year and inspire them to be competitive enough to earn a spot at Nationals. I am proud of the kids on our teams this year representing Carbon High School! I took over this group four years ago at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. It has been so rewarding to take on this program and see it develop from a small group of trivia-loving kids who compete locally, to becoming a Nationally recognized program that can hold its ground among other highly competitive schools.
I hope that Carbon can continue to be great representatives of the state of Utah on the national level of quiz bowl competitions and that we can inspire other schools to start Quiz Bowl programs of their own.
Since the competition takes place over Memorial Day weekend, travel costs for the students are pretty high this year. They have worked hard in doing a couple fundraisers to help alleviate the costs. If there are any locals or local businesses who would like to make donations to Carbon High School on behalf of the Quiz Bowl team to aid in cost of travel, we would appreciate any and all help!