Students win silver at tournament with a 7-1 record and more overall points than any other team in contest
Competition — Mikah Sauskojus, Jon Bateman (back row) Greta Hanks, Kelly Kramer and Kaity Shondelmyer (front row) represented Liberty in the Big South Tournament. Photo provided
Liberty University’s Quiz Bowl team placed second out of nine teams in the Big South Conference College Bowl Tournament held at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. Jan. 25.
Excluding a 325-245 loss to undefeated High Point University (8-0), Liberty handily defeated the seven other teams in the tournament, according to Dr. Jim Nutter, Liberty’s Quiz Bowl coach.
“We tended to win by 200 to 400 points,” Nutter said. “Our largest win was against Coastal (445-60), and our closest victory margin was against Radford (330-180). We still almost doubled their score.”
While Liberty finished the tournament with a 7-1 record and more overall points than any other team in the contest, Nutter said a second place finish to High Point was disappointing for his players.
Before the tournament, Liberty had won seven of the last eight Big South tournaments and had not lost a game to an in-conference opponent in the last four years, according to the Big South Conference Web page.
Along with wins over conference opponents, Liberty has captured out-of-conference victories over several well-known universities, according to Nutter. In fall 2013, the team defeated Johns Hopkins University, the University of Virginia (UVA) and Virginia Tech.
Jon Bateman, who placed second in points scored by an individual player at the Big South tournament, said beating UVA has always been rewarding.
“That’s always a fun experience, just because they are such a well-respected school, such a historic school,” Bateman said. “They’ve been around for almost 200 years, and Liberty’s only been around for about 40.”
In addition to UVA and Johns Hopkins University, Nutter said Liberty has taken down schools like Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Kentucky and North Carolina State University in previous years.
“It’s just amazing — the depth and breadth of the knowledge of some of these players,” Nutter said.
According to Nutter, his students will have the opportunity to test their knowledge against High Point once again when Liberty competes in the sectional Quiz Bowl tournament at Virginia Tech Feb. 8. The contest will decide which team advances to the National Quizbowl Tournament.
“We are very much looking forward to a rematch against them in this friendly rivalry that we have,” Nutter said. “We’re bringing two teams, a Varsity A and a Varsity B, so we could definitely have the opportunity to beat them, not once but twice.”
While Nutter said he is excited to compete in the sectional tournament, he hopes to one day enter his team into contests against America’s most academically esteemed universities.
“My goal is to eventually play some of the Ivy Leagues in quizbowl tournaments,” Nutter said. “In the last couple of years, we have beaten most of the major land-grant universities within neighboring distances of us.”
Nutter’s players may be competing at Ivy League schools in the future, but some of his former students are already attending as graduate students.
According to Nutter, alumni from Liberty’s Honors Program, where most quizbowl players are recruited, have been accepted to six of America’s eight Ivy League graduate programs.
One former Quiz Bowl player currently has interviews scheduled this semester with the two remaining Ivy League universities, Princeton and Harvard.
“If this student gets into both, we can say ‘eight for eight,’” Nutter said. “And that’s my goal, my dream, my hope.”