When Dan Troha came to college, he felt that something was missing.
“When I got here, we did not have a quiz team, which is kind of disappointing,” said Troha, now in his second year at the University.
Rather than remain disappointed and accept the lack of a quiz team, Troha decided to do something about it. He and a few friends, who met playing Trivial Pursuit at the Honors Center, organized the BGSU Academic Quiz Team (AQT) last year.
“Mid-way through last year, we started having meetings,” Troha said. He is currently serving as the president of the organization.
Tim Cieplowski, also in his second year at the University, is the treasurer of the AQT. Both Troha and Cieplowski played on quiz teams at St. Ignatius and Garfield Heights High School, respectively.
“A lot of people played in high school,” Troha said.
The University used to have a quiz bowl team, according to Troha and Cieplowski, but hasn’t had one in recent years.
“It used to be that the quiz team was really an asset to the whole circuit in Ohio. When it left, there was a real void of hosting tournaments and competing in tournaments in the area,” Cieplowski said. “It’s a really strong area for quiz bowl. We got a really good response from a lot of the high schools and some of the universities who really wanted to see the team come back. We really think that it’s important to have something like this at the University.”
The AQT participated in its first competition in October at the University of Rochester. The organization sent two teams or four people each.
“It was a great time,” Troha said. “It got BG back out there in the world of quiz bowl.”
In addition to competing against other college teams in the future, the AQT is planning on hosting high school level quiz bowl tournaments. The first one will be held on Nov. 20. At least 21 high school teams are expected to attend.
“It’s a function of the college quiz bowl team in general — to have tournaments for the high school teams in the region,” Troha said.
The AQT is currently looking for volunteers to help read questions and score rounds. Right now, the organization has just enough people to staff each round with one person to both read questions and keep score.
“Ideally we’d like to have enough people where we could have both a reader and scorekeeper in each room,” Troha said. “It’s a lot of pressure to read questions and keep score at the same time.”
The AQT members hope that the high school tournament will help make the University’s team well known in the world of quiz bowl once again.
“We’re still working on building it up, letting people know we’re back on campus,” Cieplowski said.
For more information about the AQT, or to help with the upcoming high school tournament, go to an AQT meeting, held every Sunday at 8 p.m. in the Honors Center.
