Oak Valley Middle School’s quiz bowl team, which has been building on its success each year, had its best performance to date — coming in fourth-place in a national tournament out of 160 teams.
The Middle School National Championship Tournament was held May 10 in Chicago with teams from 27 states and South Korea. Teams qualified by scoring enough points at National Academic Quiz Tournaments competitions earlier in the school year, according to NAQT officials.
Oak Valley’s best showing prior to this was last year, when its team came in eighth place nationally.
In addition, this year eighth-grader Roan Prasanna, 14, was recognized as an All-Star for correctly answering 50 toss-up questions during the preliminary rounds, with 29 of those gaining extra points due to him buzzing in early. He came in 19th place out of the top 25. Several hundred students competed in the tournament.
“I was not surprised because I am recognized in Southern California among the quiz bowl circuit,” Prasanna said of his individual honor. “Me and my friend study at least one hour daily … so the hard work paid off.”
This was Prasanna’s second year on Oak Valley’s team and he was on its national team last year.
“I ed because I thought it seemed interesting and I used to read a lot … of interesting stuff, so I wanted the new experience,” Prasanna said.
His subject specialties are classical literature, fine arts and the humanities, which includes religion, philosophy, social science, literature, history and mythology.
“I read a lot of classical literature when I was young because my parents wanted me to, and taking piano and violin … helps me a lot (with music questions),” he said. “I find philosophy and ancient history to be really interesting.”
ing Prasanna on Oak Valley’s team were eighth-graders Eric Dai, Rigved Reddy Gaddam, Ryan Gui, Jonah Larsson and Oliver Zhang; seventh-grader Aarnav Asudani; and sixth-graders Jason Ma and Meera Shyamal.
Because only four students can be on a team during each game, they rotated players so more students could have the opportunity to compete at the national level, said Radha Vishwanath, who coached the team with Ji Liu. They were assisted by Elizabeth Nichols.
Vishwanath said switching players also helps with the fatigue factor because even the best players get tired when playing multiple rounds.
“Roan roped in several of his classmates who were not part of the team, but were ideal candidates,” Vishwanath said. “Roan has been pushing everyone. … All the kids worked on their own (a lot). … It has been a blessing, because I can only do so much with them during the limited time we have to practice, so it is 80% them and just 20% me leading the way.”
In addition to taking online quizzes and reviewing question packets from previous tournaments on their own, Vishwanath said for the past few months the team upped its hour-long weekly practice sessions to two-hour online sessions each Saturday that were often led by her. And they held an additional hour-long practice each Sunday led by Del Norte High students who used to be on Oak Valley’s team.
This is Vishwanath’s 13th year coaching the team.
She said Oak Valley qualified for the national contest on Jan. 25 due to its performance in an online tournament. The team mostly enters online tournaments because there are no in-person opportunities for middle school teams that are solely at their level and approved by the NAQT in the San Diego area.
Many of the online tournaments are hosted by schools in the Midwest or East Coast, so she said West Coast teams are at a disadvantage since they have to get up very early to compete in morning contests held in time zones up to three hours ahead.
The four in-person tournaments Oak Valley entered this year were novice contests in high school tournaments, so the team consisting of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders went up against teams of freshmen. Despite the questions being above their grade levels, she said Oak Valley’s players did very well in the high school novice division, sometimes coming in first place.
The NAQT contests have teams of four students using buzzers to answer questions about science, math, history, literature, mythology, geography, social science, current events, sports and popular culture.
Vishwanath said students often specialize in certain subject areas.
“The kids have certain strengths, so I get a mix of students,” she said.
Eighth-grader Oliver Zhang, 14, said he ed the team this year because Prasanna encouraged him and he enjoys knowing random information.
“It was really fun,” Zhang said, noting his focus is on science and history. “They are the two topics that I had the most prerequisite knowledge about before ing quiz bowl.”
While the science questions mostly cover what he is studying and are predominantly biology related, he said the history questions cover more than what he has studied in classes thus far.
“All the American history we learn in middle school, but the other history is definitely not taught … so I have learned a lot more history,” he said.
Zhang said he was not surprised the team did well at the national tournament because of its performance in previous years.
“It was insane to see our numbers go up as we played 19 rounds,” Zhang said. “I definitely did better than I expected in of points per game, because I expected to be lower. The teams at national are really good. I definitely knew a lot more than I thought.”
Prasanna said doing well in quiz bowl requires daily studying, discipline and a hard work ethic.
During the national tournament, Oak Valley had a four-game winning streak, in which it defeated teams from Oklahoma, Minnesota, Georgia and Michigan. Oak Valley’s preliminary rounds record of 6-2 qualified the team for the tournament’s playoffs.
“There were some tense moments,” NAQT officials stated in a press release. “Oak Valley defeated Emerson A from Ann Arbor, Michigan by the narrow margin of 415-400 during round 6 and suffered a heartbreakingly narrow loss to Coppell West from Dallas, Texas, 290-275 during round 20.
“Oak Valley spent six playoff games on the brink of elimination,” officials said. “They defeated Cooper A from McLean, Virginia; Heritage A from Livingston, New Jersey; the defending champions, River Trail A (GA) from Johns Creek, Georgia; Hunter A from New York, New York; and Coppell West from Dallas, Texas before falling to Meyzeek A from Louisville, Kentucky, ending their shot at the title.”
The tournament champion was the A team from Smith Middle School of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Oak Valley did the best out of the 16 teams from California.
