More than 300 high school and middle school students from across the country came to the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Rosemont, Illinois on April 12 to compete in a quiz bowl championship. The Individual Player National Championship Tournament, unlike most forms of quiz bowl, is a competition pitting players against each other without the support of their teammates. The local students who competed are: * Jake Giem (James E. Taylor High School, Katy; Rebecca Rodriguez, coach) * Zacharia Ibrahim (Cinco Ranch High School; Katy; Robert Diethrich and Dana Mathis, coaches) * Nelson Ma (Jordan High School, Fulshear; Kirsten Hampshire, coach) Quiz bowl is normally 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. Participation in quiz bowl both reinforces lessons from the classroom and encourages players to develop new intellectual interests. Matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration, since no individual player is likely to be an expert in all subject areas. But for the NAQT IPNCT, players have no one to rely on but themselves. Players competed in six seeding rounds, playing a series of tossup questions with the goal to correctly answer a sufficient number of questions in the fewest number of questions. Nine of the 300 competitors who accomplished that task were then placed in the final round, where the lowest scoring player after each cycle of questions was eliminated. All competitors were also evaluated on their performance on questions in eight subjects and given a category ranking. Nelson Ma finished fourth in the Literature category and 61st overall. This is the eighth championship of its kind. Simultaneous with the overall contest, players are scored on their performance in several academic categories. Top performances in each category are also awarded. The full statistical breakdown can be found on NAQT's website at: https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/standings.jsp?tournament_id=17105 Many of the competitors in the IPNCT will compete later in the school year in one of NAQT's team championships, either the Middle School National Championship Tournament, the Small School National Championship Tournament, or the High School National Championship Tournament on Memorial Day weekend. More information about these championships and the teams competing can be found at www.naqt.com. ABOUT NAQT National Academic Quiz Tournaments, founded in 1996, organizes the premier middle school, high school, and college quiz bowl championships in North America. In addition to its national championships, NAQT provides questions to invitational tournaments, league championships, and television shows throughout the year. NAQT operates out of the Twin Cities and Kansas City, but its

members mentor coaches, host tournaments, volunteer their services, and share their expertise across the United States.