Blair places at national quizbowl tournament

Four members of Blair's "It's Academic" team placed 13th out of 96 teams at the National Academic Quiz Tournament (NAQT), held at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel in Chicago from June 3-5.

Juniors Jeff Cao, Armin Rosen, Ravi Umarji and David White made it through four rounds of double-elimination playoffs before losing by five points to the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies of Richmond. Rosen was the 40th highest overall scorer out of nearly 500 people.

At the tournament preliminaries, Blair went 7-3, and qualified for the playoffs, for which a 6-4 record was required. The team lost to Lakeside School of Washington, which finished second, Solon High School of Ohio, which finished fourth and Richard Montgomery High School, which finished sixth.

To be eligible for the national tournament, members had to place in the top 10 percent of "qualifiers." The Blair team qualified multiple times by placing at least fifth or sixth at different meets, each having anywhere from 40 to 60 competing teams.

Each game consists of multiple rounds of questions. Each round consists of a toss-up question and three bonus questions for the team that correctly answers the toss-up, allowing a team to win a maximum of 45 points. Questions could be asked on "anything and everything," including math, science, world history, politics, current events and pop culture, according to Umarji.

Rosen pointed out that Blair's team did very well considering the prestige and level of competition of the NAQT. "We proved we're one of the best teams in the country," he said.

Umarji said that the Blair team performed beyond their expectations. "It was very disappointing to come so close to the next round, but we did better than we had anticipated," he said.