The following day, he gets an email from Warren inviting him to a special training session in the morning, where he's given an overview of the rules of quiz bowl. Shoot! Instead of being there for my conditioning training session, I have to do quiz bowl training before class! What would I hope to accomplish by playing on the quiz bowl team? Beyond parental pride, and college applications, obviously, a Pablo stricken by self-doubt is secretly questioning why he would even play quiz bowl. Reading quiz bowl questions is one thing, but knowing what to expect from questions is not enough.
When he arrives at school, he goes directly to Warren's office as he prepares the buzzer for the introduction to quiz bowl. And a few sample questions from past tournaments the VAs attended, by difficulty levels.
"Welcome, Pablo. To begin, tossups are worth ten points, or fifteen if you answer early enough, or power. You have three seconds to answer once you buzz in. Also, if you answer incorrectly, buzz in first, and do so before the question is read in full, you will incur a five-point penalty, a neg five..." Warren explains the rules of quiz bowl to him, as well as what bonuses are, and games usually ask 20 tossups.
At first, the tight end feels a little shaky on the buzzer, since reading packets is not the same as playing. That, even though the clues are given out in describing order of difficulty. And the first question is a question of one of the most important games in VA quiz bowl history.
"The answer was Kim Thuy" Warren tells him the correct answer to the first tossup.
"Are questions always this hard?" Pablo asks, while failing to answer it.
Why did I even join the quiz bowl team? Do I really have what it takes to play with three of the smartest kids on campus? Pablo starts questioning his choice of playing quiz bowl.
"No. This was the winning tossup of the first state championship, so you have a better idea of what playing at quiz bowl-State will feel like, if you make it to the team for State" Warren then skips to the next tossup. "The fall of Smederevo on June 20, 1459, marked the full conquest of this country by the Ottoman Empire. The Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution was an event that led to this country breaking away from Yugoslavia. The Pannonian Plain covers its northern third. For ten points, name this country whose capital is Belgrade"
"Serbia" Pablo reluctantly answers after being read the question in its entirety.
"That was a question at the HSNCT"
And more specifically a question the VAs missed against DCC three years ago, causing their elimination. He reads bonuses, and Pablo realizes that question categories are random.
I might be jittery now, but I need to see with whom I will play, Pablo ruminates. I wonder how that is going to help me go to college, since I can't rely on football, or at least solely on it...
After school, there comes his first practice with the VAs' quiz bowl team, Pablo trembles like a leaf, especially after his practice with an overview of quiz bowl before class that made him a little wary of playing.
"Please welcome Pablo, he will play on the B-team at the LQBA Fall invitational in two weeks as our special topics player. Now, he's not like the classical quiz bowlers we had here up to this point, as he played tight end on the football team" Warren introduces Pablo to his quiz bowl teammates.
"Did we scrape the bottom of the barrel to get a replacement player?" Myriam asks, finding it hard to believe that the football team would designate one of their own to play quiz bowl.
"You have a long way to go!" Josiane, the middle schoolers' special topics player, comments on Pablo's origins. "However, everyone has to start somewhere, so make your experience of your first tournament count!"
YOU ARE READING
Can't Stop the Questions
RomancePablo, a sophomore playing tight end for Venomous Agendas High, plays the best football game of his life, but as the season comes to a close, his coaches tell him he can't rely on football to go to college, forcing him to buckle down on academics fo...
