By Erika Paulson
“Which Shakespearian character says the greatest number of lines in a play?”
Poised at their buzzers, Lisgar Collegiate’s quiz team is ready to answer.
“Hamlet!,” says Nevin Hotson, sitting alongside teammates Andrew Gwyn and Jamie Cooper.
Along with Simon Sokyrko, these quiz buffs will be the first Canadian high school team to go to the National Academic Quiz Tournament in Chicago next June.
It is one of the most demanding quiz competitions known to high school students, and widely regarded as the Olympics of academic competitions.
In a recent win at the Ottawa Quiz Bowl, a competition for high school teams across Ontario, the team took home a 10-0 victory and qualified to compete at the American national tournament. Other than American teams, the only other country to ever qualify is China.
The tournament includes quiz questions similar to the television show Jeopardy, and requires the team to have a firm grasp of nearly 50 categories.
These include knowledge of operas, Civil War battles, classes of particles, Hindu gods and heroes, American warships, planetary moons, medieval Islamic dynasties, types of computation problems and hockey hall of famers.
Gwyn, the team captain, says he’s not sure how his team will do at the national tour.
“We haven’t really tested the waters,” he says, “Nationals will be considerably more difficult… but we’ll give it our best shot.”
He and his teammates say they won’t be studying much harder than they already do, though. “There’s no best way to prepare,” Gwyn says, “learning a lot of random information really helps, though … The main thing is you have to have really good reflexes.”
Gwyn admits he’s a bit worried about the American content in the national tournament’s categories, which will put Lisgar at a disadvantage compared to the American teams.
“We’ll be studying American presidents, especially lesser known presidents, American sports like college football and basketball, Supreme Court cases like constitutional law, and they really love Supreme Court justices,” Gwyn says, as his teammates nod and sigh in agreement.
“But we’ve been practicing and we’ve been doing tolerably well,” he says with a grin.
The team is coached by Tamara Vardomskaya, who participated at the national level when she was a university student. She has been helping the students prepare with practices twice a week.
“My own team was expected to do very well, but we ended up coming in second to last,” she says. “It’s very difficult.”
Quiz questions aren’t all the team will have to deal with, though.
The team will have to raise money for travel expenses and the $500 entry fee.
“Everything included, it will cost somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000,” Vardomskaya says.
Gwyn says the group will be raising money by selling refreshments at the school play and other local events.
“We’d really like our local community to support us,” he adds.
“The whole thing is very intimidating at first, but it’s great because you’re part of a team,” he says.