Andrew Yaphe (at left), who is considered the country’s best quiz bowl player, listens to the question posed to his co-player Ryan Scranton.

College quiz bowl team wins a triple crown

With its victory at the Academic Competition Federation National Championship last Saturday, the University’s College Bowl team became the first team in quiz bowl history to win all three national titles in the same year––a remarkable triple crown. The team went 18-0 over the weekend, four games better than their closest competition, the University of Maryland.

According to fourth-year team president Mike Zarren, Chicago’s record-setting third ACF National Championship on April 24 completed the triple crown, which was bolstered by first places at the College Bowl Company Inc. National Championship Tournament and the National Academic Quiz Tournaments National Championship earlier this month.

“This is truly the crowning achievement of what is probably the best year for any collegiate quiz bowl team,” said Zarren. With an all-time national record of 15 tournament wins, the Chicago team currently ranks No. 1 in the national players’ poll.

The weekend ACF competition featured questions from exclusively academic fields––history and science to literature and geography. The competing University team was composed of Andrew Yaphe, a first-year Ph.D. candidate in English Language & Literature; Ryan Scranton, a Ph.D. candidate in Astronomy & Astrophysics; third-year Sarah Bagby; first-year Jeffrey Bennett; and second-year Matthew Gealy.

These students went head-to-head with other quiz bowl participants from the University of Maryland; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Illinois; Berry College; Columbia University; the University of Iowa and the University of Texas.