St. Thomas Quiz Bowl completed an exceptional competitive season at the 2023 National Championship Tournament in Atlanta.

Science faculty member Michael Erickson and team captain Campbell Brown ‘24 led the Eagles through a series of fiercely challenging battles of accumulated facts. Nicolas Borin ‘24, Aidan Clark ‘24, Manuel Cohen ‘24, Zacariah Hart ‘26, Hayden Hoover ‘24, and Henry Lane ‘24 finished the preliminary rounds with a 5-5 record on their way to a final overall position of 155 among more than 300 competing schools from 40 states.

Quiz Bowl serves as a varsity sport of the mind – an academic joust with a format similar to “Jeopardy!” One of the most popular, longest-running television shows of all time offered a righteous mental exercise and trivia gantlet.

Quiz Bowl requires four-person teams to field questions drawn from the full array of core high school curriculum, as well as pop culture and current events.  Team members must buzz in first with the correct answer. Questions are designed to give the most-prepared player the best chance of answering correctly with the hardest clues coming first and the hints gradually decreasing in difficulty. The matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration. Toss-up questions are open to each of the two teams in a match, and a correct answer earns the exclusive right to confer on a three-part bonus question.

A hallmark of consistency with a dose of drama that transpires each time.

Test your own brawny brain power:

This Swiss-French architect wrote Towards a New Architecture.

Name this former dictator of Zimbabwe who was deposed in a 2017 coup d’état.

A former president of the Northern Pacific Railroad is the namesake of this ”Magic City,” which is the most populous city in Montana.

Name this protein found in high levels in aquatic mammals. In humans, it is normally only released into the bloodstream following a muscle injury.

Angela is 36 years old, her son Brian is 9 years old, and they share a birthday. How old will Angela be when Brian is Angela’s current age?

Answers:

Le Corbusier or Charles-Édouard Jeanneret Gris

Robert (Gabriel) Mugabe

Billings

myoglobin

63 years old [Angela is 27 years older than Brian, so when Brian is 36, Angela will be 36 plus 27.]

Of course.

Participation reinforces academic lessons from the classroom and encourages players to develop new intellectual interests.

St. Thomas opened with a dominant 280-155 victory over New Haven (Connecticut) The Hopkins School, then charged past Minnetonka (Minnesota) 240-225 and Greenville (South Carolina) Southside 260-160 to reach round 5.

The Eagles later racked consecutive wins over Las Vegas Clark (320-25) in round 7 and Danville (Kentucky) 195-190 in round 16. But the playoff pursuit ended with a 375-130 defeat to Clayton (Ohio) Northmont in round 20.

St. Thomas was one of 25 schools from Texas engaged in the elite national championship. The event is staged by National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC. The organization was founded in 1996 and orchestrates the premier middle school, high school, community college, and college national quiz bowl championships in North America.

St. Thomas didn’t have a quiz program until faculty member Grover Green ‘04 was approached in 2014 to launch the quest for arcane but valuable knowledge.

Catholic. Basilian. Teaching Goodness, Discipline, and Knowledge since 1900.