On Nov. 6, the Lexington High School Quiz Show team qualified for the High School Quiz Show, a tournament organized by the WGBH media station. In the competition, schools compete for the Massachusetts State Championship. The team has four starters: seniors Rory Fox and Evan Bouwens and sophomores Atreya Mallanna and Owen Jiang. Joshua Olivier-Mason, an English teacher, coaches them.
“[The Quiz Show] is a bracket-style competition with single-elimination and comprises categories like science, math, literature, current events, sports, and pop culture. Lexington has had a long history of success in the tournament, having qualified for the most consecutive years,” Olivier-Mason said.
To qualify, the team participated in Super Sunday, an event where teams from more than 100 Massachusetts schools took a 45-minute test. Lexington placed second, and since then, they have been preparing for the State Championship.
“The most important part of our preparation is the teamwork phase. No single student or person could ever memorize all of the trivia in the world, so it’s important to work with your team when you can confer,” Jiang said.
In addition to individual preparation for their subjects, the team is also practicing their buzzing skills with pens.
“We also just signed up for buzzer practice at the studio in January. We will spend an hour practicing with the buzzer which sounds a little silly but the buzzer makes a big difference. A lot of the students on both teams typically know the majority of the answers and it is often just, in my experience, a timing thing,” Olivier-Mason said.
Participants on the team have prior experiences with buzzer-style competitions ranging from the National Geographic Geography Bee to Science Bowl, and will apply acquired knowledge to the Quiz Show.
“Both me and Atreya competed against each other in the Geography Bee several years ago. In middle school, I did science bowl and I currently do the National Ocean Science Bowl” Bouwens said.
While some team members do have experience using buzzers in competitions, it is especially important for them to practice those skills. This is because the Quiz Show used an online interface for the past couple years due to COVID.
“WGBH did a good job managing to keep the competition going through a virtual tournament, but the fun of going into the studio was gone,” Olivier-Mason said. “The change in the nature of the competition affected Lexington’s performance in the tournament.”
As the Quiz Show returns to the studio for the first time since 2020, the team will have to stay calm and work well under pressure to succeed.
“During the competition, it is important not to get caught in the moment. It is one of the hard things to prepare for. When we have made it out of the first round, the team has more confidence,” Olivier-Mason said.
The team’s first matchup against Hingham High School will air on March 11, and if victorious in the two subsequent competitions, the team will advance to the State Championship.
