Flashing buzzers, school spirit and fast-paced trivia kicked off the sixth annual ASU Academic Bowl this week as 16 teams competed in the preliminary elimination rounds Monday and Tuesday night.
Thursday the four remaining teams will compete in the final rounds in a televised event held at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the KAET-Channel 8 Studios at 7 p.m.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Gold team will be hoping to secure their championship title for the second year in a row as they go up against the W. P. Carey School of Business team, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Maroon team and the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering Gold team.
CLAS has had a winning team for the past four years.
Virgil Renzulli, vice president of public affairs and the event’s key organizer, said the ASU Academic Bowl was created for students to showcase their academic talent.
“The basic idea behind all this was to focus our students attention on academic achievement,” Renzulli said. “In our wildest dreams we thought ‘suppose we had a bunch of people inside cheering on correctly answered questions,’ and they did.”
The competition started Monday night with eight teams competing in 15-minute rounds. The teams are paired randomly by drawing names from a hat, Renzulli said.
Teams from each school are paired against each other, buzzing in to answer “toss-up questions” worth 10 points. By correctly answering a toss-up question, the team receives the chance to answer a three-part bonus question worth up to 30 points.
“In about 15 minutes, teams sometimes get 350 to 400 points, it really is amazing” Renzulli said.
Monday night, the CLAS Maroon team and Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering Gold team came out on top to move to the final rounds. Tuesday night, the reigning champions CLAS Gold team and the W. P. Carey School team each secured enough wins to also move on.
Teams secure a place in the final rounds by winning the most matches (generally three or four wins) on their preliminary tournament night, Renzulli said.
History and Arabic studies senior Louis Weimer from the CLAS Gold team said his team’s strengths come from its great amount of cohesion and balance.
“Last year we were definitely the underdogs and many were surprised we won, including us,” Weimer said. “You can’t take anything for granted with something like this and I think if we stay on our game we can win again.”
Chemistry and education junior Laura Procknow and her University College teammate, business and communications senior Aaron Ryckman, said their team has been using Wikipedia as a practice tool.
“We’re here for having fun and being awesome,” Procknow said. “Our weaknesses would probably be the pencil and paper questions — the math.”
Questions come from a variety of topics including history, popular culture, literature and mathematics.
Students also have a big incentive for competing. The first place team is awarded $24,000 in scholarship money to be divided among team members. Second place receives $10,000 and the two third place teams (as there is no tiebreaker for third place) each receive $5,000.
“We have been amazed at how good the teams are and how much enthusiasm there is for the competition,” Renzulli said. “It’s really been a pleasure to see this and get to know the students and see how well they perform.”
Reach the reporter at newlin.tillotson@asu.edu
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