UK students to compete in ‘Quiz Bowl’ National Championship

Quiz bowl is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for teams of four students

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ/PRESS RELEASE) – Students from the University of Kentucky will be participating in a quiz bowl national championship on April 2.   The 2022 Intercollegiate Championship Tournament hosted by National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC, will take place in Rosemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago.

The 2022 National Academic Quiz Tournaments Intercollegiate Championship Tournament represents a return to in-person play.  The 2021 ICT was played over Zoom conference calls between teams in three countries, and all events prior to 2020 were in-person competitions.  This is the 24th national championship.

Quiz bowl is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for teams of four students.  Quiz bowl teams use buzzers to answer questions about science, math, history, literature, mythology, geography, social science, current events, sports, and popular culture.  The matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration, since no individual player is likely to be an expert in all subject areas.  Participation in quiz bowl both reinforces lessons from the classroom and encourages players to develop new intellectual interests.

This year’s competition features 64 teams in two divisions.  The divisions are split by experience.  Division II players from this year’s field will move up to Division I next year.  All teams will play seven preliminary matches in pool play on Saturday morning, and be seeded into brackets for afternoon play, where they will play six more matches.  After that, a series of final matches will determine the overall division champions and the top undergraduate-only team.

This year’s tournament features two teams from the University of Kentucky, one in each division.  Teams from Kentucky have attended the last four ICTs.

Teams qualified for the 2022 ICT by a strong performance in the Sectional Championship Tournaments held in February. In addition to the nine Sectionals held in person, a tenth Online Sectional was held for teams restricted from traveling off-campus.

Last year, Columbia won the Division I title, defeating the University of Illinois in the finals, while Brown won the Undergraduate title in Division I.  Vanderbilt won the Division II title, defeating the team from the University of Minnesota in the final match.

Tournament results will be updated throughout the day at http://www.naqt.com/go/stats/12404 so everyone can follow along and see how the teams do.

To provide more information about quiz bowl, NAQT has assembled a guide for the press at: https://www.naqt.com/nationals/press-guide.jsp .  The page provides answers to frequently asked questions about NAQT and quiz bowl, a glossary of common terms, examples of classic matches and sample questions.

NAQT’s YouTube channel (https://www.naqt.com/go/youtube) has recordings of hundreds of championship matches from past years, as well as videos showing how to play and organize tournaments in your area.