The parish media starts making comparisons between players on the B-team and past VA quiz bowlers as soon as the tournament ends. Yet, they only have four days between now and the scheduled double-header against DCC, held remotely. The teams will play each other from their home venues: Novi, MI for DCC, and, of course, VA.
Also, in the days to follow, Pablo gets more attention than he ever got in the off-season up to this point. Especially when Pablo scores the final tossup in the game that secured their second HSNCT berth. On Monday, before class:
"Bravo, Holy Beggar, you made it!" Natalie tells him, with Dayton next to her.
"I got to go" Pablo then waits for the time to deliver the morning announcement.
The morning announcement winds up being a real doozy, but the girls' basketball team goes first. Which means Audrey delivers her part of the announcement first.
"On Sunday, the girls' basketball team lost its game against Lake Charles Prep, fifty-one to thirty-one" a down on her mood Audrey announces to the student body before going to class.
Then comes the boys' basketball team, who won against St. Louis Catholic on the road, 46-40. And soccer, whose boys' team lost 0-2 against Washington-Marion and the girls' team tied 2-2 against South Beauregard. Finally, the turn of the quiz bowl team arrives:
"At the ESA Cade Cane Classic on Saturday, the quiz bowl A-team won the tournament, while the B-team finished fourth in a field of twenty-four. As a result, the Venomous Agendas earned a second HSNCT berth!"
Up to this point, townsfolk only seemed to care about the B-team quiz bowlers if their kids needed help academically. But now that I made it to the HSNCT, the onus is on me to keep my grades up and perform on the buzzer, even though I won't be going to State, Pablo seems consumed by his thoughts. Going into the HSNCT, the locals will hear about the following names more, especially in the lead-up to it: Nadine Fauchoux, Lilina Ortiz, Gerard Dupuis and, of course, I, Pablo Medina.
And then several quiz bowlers whose parents are unable to attend Thursday's fundraiser show start giving their customary two tickets away, at first recess.
"Would you like to go to the quiz bowl game on Thursday? We'll play our big rivals, DCC" Lilina asks bystanders.
"DCC? What's a DCC?" George asks her, not knowing anything about academic rivalries.
"Detroit Catholic Central. They're our biggest rival in nerdy things!"
I feel like these people over in Novi asked for a debate round to be played before the quiz bowl games because debate is their cash-strapped team, Lilina then reads the article in the newspaper about comparisons between past and present VA quiz bowlers after handing him a ticket to the game. She then proceeds to auction off the other ticket.
Like Nadine drawing comparisons to Anna, Myriam being compared to Imélie, Pablo being compared to Florence...
By the time quiz bowl practice happens, on Tuesday, the coach makes an announcement to his players:
"Going forward, high school players, I feel like you should read collegiate sets. They're a bit more dense, and feature more arcane clues, but if you plan on playing quiz bowl in college, you will find it useful" Warren then adds a caveat. "There are also fewer sets to wade through"
"Since the program of the night features a debate game, I might be wondering how good the debate team is" the A-team history player asks the coach, since the debate team is flying under the radar.
"Just because DCC is competing nationally in debate doesn't mean they're better than we are. In debate, they are all-in on Lincoln-Douglas, and Michigan is a notoriously weak LD state" the A-team literature player comments on DCC as a debate team.
Their history against us in debates is that they kept losing games against us, but each loss appeared to increase in profile vs the last, the A-team literature player has memories of his older sibling playing on the debate team resurface.
"One more thing: the parish is paying for the transportation costs to the HSNCT under the form of a minibus, so our fundraising targets are now lowered. Finally, everyone will get a taste of collegiate questions in two days" Warren turns to the middle schoolers. "Even the middle schoolers"
"What do you mean, we get a taste of collegiate questions?" Josiane asks, worried that collegiate questions would be too much for her and the middle school team.
"People watch us do what the audience cannot" Myriam comments on middle schoolers playing college packets. "Don't worry about the crowd: because, as with math games, people will be mostly powerless over the questions"
While the coach conducts drills using past packets submitted by teams VA alumni played on, for ACF (Academic Competition Federation) collegiate tournaments, they all realize how big of a difficulty jump that is. (With power marks added roughly halfway through a tossup)
Even when the middle schoolers are treated to the packet containing Cornell D's 2025 ACF Fall half-packet, and yet, that was one of the easiest packets for that very tournament. Whereas the middle schoolers were regularly powering in tournaments, such as the LQBA Winter Invitational South, here they can barely answer tossups before the FTP mark.
At any rate, no one powered nearly as many questions as they used to, not even Myriam, when both high school squads are playing the packet containing Tulane's half-packet for the 2029 ACF Regionals in a drill. Once the practice ends:
"Now that you proved yourself to our eyes, we must give you the respect that's due" the A-team history player tells Pablo. "I apologize for being a little condescending towards you"
"I accept"
And then Pablo turns to Audrey, feeling like a lot has changed since he started playing quiz bowl. Both with her and in his life outside the game.
"Before I started playing quiz bowl, I would never have thought about playing at the HSNCT. I would have imagined that I would have remained on the B-team for the rest of my high school career. That the pressure on me to study would have consumed me" Pablo confides in her. "If you told me three months ago that we would both be playing at the HSNCT, I wouldn't have believed it"
"To the rest of the town, we are the brains, but I wonder if that is getting the better of you, or of, say, Lilina or Nadine" Audrey adds. "But it does help you in class"
Speaking of Lilina and Nadine, their brains are wonderful machines, and... mine, too. I could more or less say the same of everyone on the team, really. Yet, I wonder if there's anyone in town who would dream of playing quiz bowl for VA the way girls in town dream of becoming mathletes, Audrey, triggered by this mention of player growth, seems to space out for a bit.
"Yet we haven't met our fundraising targets yet. Hopefully this game will help us meet them" Pablo comments, while checking on the GoFundMe campaign's status.
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...
