Carleton Academic Quiz Team Wins Undergraduate National Championship

The Carleton College Academic Quiz Team reached its ultimate goal last weekend by capturing the undergraduate national title at the 1999 National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) Intercollegiate Championships, held April 9-10 on the campus of the University of Michigan.

At the tournament, teams with graduate students as well as undergraduate-only teams vied for two national championships: an unrestricted overall title, captured by the University of Chicago, and the undergraduate national championship, awarded to Carleton as the top-finishing all undergraduate team. Carleton finished eighth overall in the 48-team field, well ahead of its nearest competitor and last year’s defending undergraduate champion, Swarthmore College, which finished 14th.

“This is by far the best team I’ve ever coached,” said College Archivist Eric Hillemann, who has coached Carleton’s quiz teams for the last eight seasons. “They function together magnificently well, and are unusually balanced, with each member contributing whole-heartedly. They have worked tremendously hard to make this happen and the title now belongs forever to them. I am very proud!”

The Carleton team entered the national tournament ranked 12th in the country in the most recent poll of quiz bowl players and coaches. Senior captain Emily Pike of DeKalb, Ill., and juniors Andrew Felton of New Canaan, Conn., Steven Jenkins of Philadelphia, and Cheryl Klein of Belton, Mo., have played together for three years, building a solid reputation among quiz bowlers as one of the best teams in the country.

The foursome qualified for nationals by placing third at the sectional championships in February. The team has worked toward this year’s title since losing the national championship to Swarthmore last year, compiling an overall record of 70-22, and losing only once to another all-undergraduate team.

At the NAQT national championships, two teams of up to four players each are pitted against each other. A moderator reads a “toss-up” question, available to both teams, with each word revealing another clue to the answer. The team that buzzes in and answers correctly gets a chance at a 30-point bonus question. If you interrupt the question with an incorrect answer, you receive a “neg 5”-your team’s score is reduced by five points and the opposing team is allowed to hear the entire question before answering. There are also “power points” given for answering correctly after only a few words of the question have been read.

On the quiz team circuit, every nook, cranny and dusty corner of human knowledge is fair game. Questions can be drawn from such academic areas as science, literature, history, art, and geography, as well as from current events, sports, and pop culture. Based on results from previous tournaments, the Carleton team knew its one area of weakness was current events, so to prepare for the national championship, they spent hours poring over reference sources that summarized events from the last two years.

The Carleton foursome began its quest for the national title on Friday, April 9, compiling a record of 5-1 in a six-game schedule, and defeating Swarthmore, 225-185. Its only loss was by a narrow margin, 200-195, to Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

On Saturday, April 10, during five rounds of “power matching,” the Carleton team was pitted against teams with similar records. The competition was tough, and Carleton finished this section with three losses and two wins, which came against Harvard and Yale universities.

The tournament concluded with four rounds of “ladder play.” Carleton entered this final phase ranked number 10 based on its strength of schedule and results. By virtue of wins over George Washington University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Carleton advanced up the ladder to finish the tournament in eighth position overall.

In addition to the national championship foursome, Carleton qualified two other teams for the tournament, both of which fared well. A team composed of four first-year players (Brian Droitcour of Barrington, R.I., Andrew Eppig of Antrim, N.H., Shane Ewert of Brainerd, Minn., and Gabriel Lyon of Galesburg, Ill.) finished in third place in the Division II field of 16 teams. A Carleton “B” squad of juniors Kathryne Beebe of Belton, Mo., and Daniel Snyder of Hancock, Mich., sophomore Theodore Salk of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and senior Andrew Ulland of Austin, Minn., captured 33rd place at the Division I level.