The Middlesex Middle School (MMS) Quiz Bowl team is racking up the wins this season.
In their three middle school-level quiz bowl showings, MMS teams captured first and second place at all three. The most recent was at the Bergen Winter Classic Tournament in River Edge, N.J.
That win led to the school’s Quiz Bowl A, B, and C teams being selected as the National Academic Quiz Tournaments “Middle School Team of the Week.” They have also qualified for nationals in Dallas this May.
Members of the Middlesex Middle School Quiz Bowl rest their brains to pose for a picture. (Picture from Darien Public Schools Newsletter)
MMS Advisers Barbara Ivey and Ken Romeo, who led the school’s Quiz Bowl team to a national championship in 2016, continue to coordinate, coach, and prepare students. Pictured above is an early morning session held in the school library. There are more than 40 members involved in Quiz Bowl at the middle school.
The Darien High School Quiz Bowl team, stocked with new recruits from the middle school program, had success recently at the regional Quiz Bowl tournament at Yale University. Each Darien team had a winning record in a 26-team field stocked with some of the highest scorers in the Northeast.
DHS Advisers Dan Record and John Gearty noted that the high school’s field in this tournament was largely composed of members of last year’s middle school Quiz Bowl team. For them, the tournament was one of their first exposures to high school play at the highest competitive level, where many of the players are older than they are by two or more years.
“Each Darien team showed both grit and brilliance in the grueling afternoon rounds, and each team learned some lessons in perseverance by winning several games literally at the last minute,” said Gearty. The high school currently has three teams qualifying for nationals in Atlanta, Georgia this year.
Quiz Bowl is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for teams of four students. Quiz Bowl teams use buzzers to answer questions about science, math, history, literature, mythology, geography, social science, current events, sports, and popular culture.
The matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration, since no individual player is likely to be an expert in all subject areas, according to the National Academic Quiz Tournaments.
— Marc Marin is district director of instructional technology. This article is republished from the Darien Public Schools News of the Week newsletter.