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Friday, January 25, 2013 By Catherine P.
Advertising
WMS ready
to answer
challenge at
Quiz Bowl
Ten students to compete
Saturday at Malden Catholic
By CATHERINE P.
Watertown Splash staff reporter
It all started on Jan. 26, 1993. That was the date of the the first Quiz Bowl at Malden Catholic High School.
The Watertown Middle School’s 10-person Quiz Bowl team will be competing in the 20th anniversary event on Saturday. The daylong competition is run by the Malden Catholic students.
The team is run by the Cluster 2 English teacher Kara Conceison. She said she started the WMS team because of her dad.
“He’s the reason I got into it,” she said.
Mr. Conceison taught in Winthrop and brought a team to the first Quiz Bowl, and he continued to bring teams until he retired. According to Ms. Conceison, this year he is visiting from Michigan and “he is planning to come and support Watertown!”
Every Thursday after school, the WMS Quiz Bowl team meets in Ms. Conceison’s room to practice for the competition. The WMS students on this year’s team are Jeremy Ornstein, Nicholas Ornstein, Devyani Arora, Honor Petrie, Catherine Holt, Julia Hum, Julia Moynihan, James Piccirilli, Nicholas Cordeiro, and Ben Lowry.
Devyani, a seventh-grader who is doing Quiz Bowl for her second year, said, “I’m excited, and we are going to do our best.”
Honor, a sixth-grader, who is competing for the first time, said, “I’m excited to see what it’s like.”
Each student specializes in a category or a wild-card category. There are three rounds with five categories, which are this year, Presidents, Impressionists, Environmental Science, Pop Culture, and Mental Math. Each team member specializes in one of these categories.
The wild-card round is done by one member from each team competing, and the contestant must answer their questions based on their specialization. For example, in the category The Year 1993, one of the students would need to know as much as possible about that year and answer questions given.
Other wild-card categories this year are January 26, Inaugural Traditions, MLK Anniversary Celebrations, and Name That Tune.
For the earlier classroom rounds, a correct answer is worth 10 points and an incorrect answer is minus 5 points. The wild cards are worth a lot more: 50 points, and teams can’t lose any points.
To end the competition there is a final round, where the top three schools compete to determine the winner.
In 2011, the WMS came in second overall. Last year, the team had the highest point total going into the finals, but an error in the scoring kept Watertown from even competing for the championship. Organizers apologized for the mistake, and three Malden Catholic students came to a Watertown School Committee meeting and present WMS with its first-place trophy.
But Ms. Conceison isn’t worried about this weekend.
“It’s a new year and a new competition,” she said, adding that she is confident the her team will do great.
--Jan. 24, 2013--
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