On any given week, The University of Alabama Quiz Bowl Club will be busy practicing, preparing for tournaments or going out to dinner. About 15 students practice regularly and compete with the club and the club has grown into a close-knit group of friends over the years.
Quiz Bowl is a trivia competition where teams of four compete against each other in tournaments. Similar to the game show “Jeopardy,” Quiz Bowl requires contestants to learn and memorize trivia facts from history, literature, math, science and pop culture.
“We compete in academic competitions here and at other colleges throughout the nation,” said Jonathan Thompson, a graduate student on the team. “This is like Jeopardy but tougher questions, and there’s no money.”
Thompson, who’s been on the team since 2006, has been a part of many of the tournaments, including several national competitions.
Meredith Rickard, a senior majoring in chemistry, has been in the club since her freshman year and is now president of the club. Rickard said she met some of her closest friends on the team.
“A lot of us are very good friends. It’s normal for a group of us to go get dinner afterwards,” Rickard said. “A lot of our tournaments are far away, and you can’t spend that many hours in a car with someone without getting close to them.”
Thompson said Quiz Bowl has typically been perceived as a competition for the academic elite, but she insisted that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s pretty laid back. It defies stereotypes a lot,” Thompson said. “There’s people that know their stuff and don’t take things too seriously.”
The club sent two teams to compete in an upcoming tournament in Western Kentucky Dec. 7.
“It’s been fun because we’re able to see and enjoy places that we might not get to,” Thompson said. “We get to go to museums and eat Greek food. We’re like academic tourists.”
Making time for these tournaments can be tough with school, but Rickard said time management goes a long way. During these trips, she said many of the people on the team bring along their school books and laptops.
Tournaments are usually eight hours, where teams play about 10 matches to decide the winner. Rickard said people get an assortment of different prizes for winning or competing, including trophies and books. Some competitions even include a prize for who did the worst.
“If you buzz into a question early and get it wrong, you get negative five points, so there’s always a neg prize to the person who negs the most times,” Rickard said.
Over the past eight years, Thompson said he has seen the team change and grow. He said he plans to continue Quiz Bowl for as long as he’s here at the University.
“I’ve seen a change in the dedication of writing questions and making it a focus to spread Quiz Bowl not just throughout the campus but throughout the region and hopefully the nation,” Thompson said. “We’ve established ourselves as more of a legitimate organization.”
