The Best Game I Ever Saw

Some of you may know that when I was in high school I was on the Natchitoches Central Quiz Bowl team. If you're not sure what that means, Quiz Bowl is an academic team competition where players answer trivia or general knowledge questions. The Louisiana version is divided into four rounds that consist of both buzz-in and team-answered questions. I don't know how other states structure their games.

The person reading the questions (the moderator) should ideally be a non-factor in the outcome of a game. The only time the reader has a real impact is if they do something wrong -- maybe really wrong. I would guess that a lot of players who have experienced a bad moderator think to themselves "I can do a lot better than that." When my playing days were over, I put my money where my mouth was and started volunteering to read for tournaments.

Actually, I guess I put my mouth where my mouth was.

In college I read for the St. Mary's, regional, and state tournaments. When I moved back to Louisiana from Virginia, the first thing one of the local organizers said to me was, "You're reading for quiz bowl again." She didn't have to twist my arm. Moderating is one of the great joys of my life.

One might assume -- correctly -- that I carry a certain amount of bias on the matter, but I think that there are no better kids than quiz bowl kids. They're smart, fun, usually laid back. They're competitive, but not to the point of annoying obnoxiousness (there are exceptions to this last one). They're sociable kids, not friendless nerds. I spoke with one team's coach after one tournament, and he said the other teachers and staff at his school just didn't get it. They said it was too bad he was "stuck" coaching quiz bowl. "Yeah," he said, with a big grin, "Stuck." They have no idea how much fun he has.

The past three years I've been asked to read the TV rounds of the state tournament. The semifinals and finals used to be shown live; now they're recorded and put on DVDs. Sometimes LPB will show them at random times. I got a message from a friend a few months ago, saying she saw me on TV. I had a brief moment of panic that some video of me dancing had made its way onto the Internet and was now being shown on one of those shows that combs the Youtube archives for embarrassing material. Then she told me it was "some quiz bowl thing" and I breathed a big sigh of relief. Jesuit High School in New Orleans had won the title the previous year (and the year before that, and the year before that), so the local New Orleans LPB station was showing the finals.

This year the final four teams were Anacoco/River Oaks (first game), Jesuit/Vandebilt Catholic (second game). Regarding the first two teams, I've seen several of their players in other tournaments, so I was familiar with each. Anacoco had come up to Melrose to take a tour a few weeks ago, and some of their players made the trip. This was at least the third trip to the semifinal round for River Oaks, and they advanced to the finals for what I believe is the first time.

The second game was the best game I've ever seen.

The first round consists of ten tossup questions worth ten points each. Score after the first round: 50-50

The second round is known as the lightning round, and has two sets of ten questions related to a single category, with a coin toss determining which team gets asked first. Each set is asked and answered within 60 seconds, and those questions not answered correctly by the first team are then asked to the second team, which has another 60 seconds. Reverse the order for the second set of ten questions.

Questions are worth five points each. Score after the second round: Jesuit by 5

The third round is the worksheet round. Each team has two minutes to fill out the same worksheet of 20 questions. Each question is worth ten points, meaning the maximum score for a team in the round is 200 points.

Round totals: Jesuit 190, Vandebilt Catholic 200

Score after the third round: Vandebilt Catholic by 5

The fourth round is the tossup/bonus round. Eight tossup questions are asked, each worth ten points. Correctly answering a tossup earns your team the right to answer four bonus questions worth five points each. Bonus questions not answered correctly by the first team are given to the second team to answer.

Throughout the fourth round the teams went back and forth. One team would get the tossup and a couple of the bonus, and the other would get the remaining bonuses. This pattern continued, question after question, and I knew that the score was a close one. I didn't realize how close until after the sixth question of the round, when something happened behind me. I'm not sure exactly what it was. Maybe somebody sighed a loud sigh, or inhaled in a certain way, shifted in their chair, or murmured something under their breath. Whatever it was, it told me that not only was this a tight game, it was really, really, mind-bogglingly close, and it led me to glance at the scoreboard on a monitor in front of me for the first time since the round began.

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I will digress for a moment to talk about scoring. If you can score 250 points in a quiz bowl game, you've probably had a good game. If you can get to 300 you can generally expect to win. Getting above 300 means that you are doing very, very well.

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Score after the 6th question of the fourth round: Jesuit 345, Vandebilt Catholic 345.

Tied at 345! I've never seen this in my life! I came very close to looking at the teams and saying something like, "Just so you know, this score is ridiculous." I didn't.

Jesuit answered the seventh question and three of the bonus, giving them a 25-point lead. This was the margin of victory, as neither team answered the eighth question.

Final score: Jesuit 370, Vandebilt Catholic 345. The world seemed to exhale. I was caught up in doing the reading, but the audience had kept track of the score every step of the way. It must have been enormously more stressful for them than it was for me.

As the teams left the stage, I turned around and approached the President of the LAAC, who was sitting two rows behind me. He shook his head and smiled. I leaned forward and said, "That's the best game I've ever seen. Fifty-fifty after the first round. Tied at 345! Are you kidding* me?" "Don't forget that Vandebilt got a perfect score on the worksheet," he said.

Vandebilt Catholic passed me coming up the stairs on their way out. I had to stop them and say something.

"Vandebilt?" They turned. "I volunteered for state quiz bowl when I was in college. One year I watched Vandebilt play in one of the games, and they had the greatest single player I've ever seen**. He could answer anything under the sun. There was no category, no question that he could not get right."

You may not believe this, my people, but I had to pause and collect myself to say the rest.

"That game just now was the greatest game I've ever seen, and I'm glad I got to be part of it."

They thanked me, and the coach and a couple players shook my hand. I turned around and had to take a couple deep breaths to collect myself again.

I admit it. I got a little emotional complimenting the so-called "loser" of a quiz bowl match.

Jesuit beat River Oaks in the finals to win their fourth straight state title. During the trophy presentation I repeated to them what I had said to Vandebilt. One of the volunteers who works the state tournament every year told me that she agreed.

March 31, 2012 was a long, strenuous, sometimes stressful day, mostly due to activities that took place before I even started on the quiz bowl part. I went to bed twenty hours after I started the day, and I was physically worn down and mentally drained. But no matter what else happened that day, had it been for me or against me, that match made up for it all. I may forget the name on the grave I cleaned, the basketball games I watched, the band I heard sing on the riverbank, and the people I sat next to at the bar; but I will never forget that game.

Take care, my people.

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* In retrospect, I cannot actually confirm that I said the word "kidding." I may have gone a little blue at that point

** This is 100% true.