Quiz Bowl Team

Liberty University’s Quiz Bowl team began the month of February with a bang, taking the Big South Championship by storm. At the tournament, which took place at Longwood University, the team went 7-0 in matches against Gardner-Webb, Longwood, High Point, Coastal Carolina, Presbyterian, Radford and Campbell to claim the championship title.

Liberty won over Gardner-Webb 325-250, High Point 405-190, Longwood 390-185, Coastal Carolina 370-105, Radford 340-165, Campbell 505-65 and Presbyterian 470-190.

“That was really exciting,” Jon Bateman, senior Quiz Bowl team member, said. “We lost (the Big South Championship) last year. We (came in) second place to High Point University. We came back this year and we hit them in round two, and we beat them by a pretty solid margin.”

The team also participated in the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) Regionals, which began Saturday, Feb. 7 at the University of Virginia (UVA). Bateman said the NAQT Regionals is where the team can try to qualify for nationals. Last year, the team competed in Division II, but this year, it competed in Division I.

The Quiz Bowl team earned five wins in Saturday’s Tournament. Liberty won over Delaware 220-215, North Carolina 265-100, North Carolina 175-165, VCU 395-175 and Roanoke 205-120.
According to Coach Jim Nutter, his team faced a number of top-tier schools in the tournaments, including William & Mary, Johns Hopkins, UVA, Duke, Georgetown, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, VCU, George Washington and the University of Pennsylvania.

“The big news is that we qualified for the Academic Competition Federation (ACF) National tournament that will be held at the University of Michigan on April 18-19,” Nutter said. “We were the 41st ranked team of 44 teams chosen. This will be the second time in two years that we received a national tournament invitation, and last year we finished ranked 20th in the country.”

Nutter said his team hopes to improve on last year’s results.

In order to prepare for the tournament, the team has typically been practicing twice a week for about an hour and a half each time, though Bateman said it has upped the practice time to two hours for the past two weeks.

“I’m positive that (the national tournament) will be a great learning experience and an exciting new direction for Liberty’s team, because we are going up against bigger opponents, tougher opponents,” Bateman said.