Bowl team ranked ninth

By Matt MajarianCampus Times StaffAfter recently being ranked as the ninth college quiz bowl team in the nation by the Texas Quiz Bowl Alliance, the UR Thelion Society is off to another good start in 2005. Buoyed by successes at Yale University, Williams College and Brock University, the team aims to finish strong as it competes in more tournaments in the upcoming months.”The society’s new members started off the year on their own against several veteran teams,” Thelion Society Press Director and sophomore Jason Eisele said. “The players proved that they were able to compete on the academic circuit.”At the beginning of the year, the society hosted UR’s own quiz bowl tournament – the Frederick Douglass Invitational Championship. In it, UR teams took 10th and 11th places in the field of 18.On Oct. 29, teams from the Thelion Society competed in an event called “Bulldogs Over Broadway” at Yale University. “We didn’t encounter some of the stars here that we usually see,” senior Gordon Arsenoff said. Although the team finished fifth, Arsenoff earned 50.5 points per game to place him second in the tournament. “It all depends on who you have on your team,” Arsenoff said in reference to his individual showing. “For getting second, I got a book of Robert Louis Stevenson’s works.”That same day, the quiz bowl participants traveled to Williams College to participate in a TRASH-style tournament. This format allows for questions that are not specifically academic in nature, leaving room for pop culture and other areas. These tournaments are therefore favorites among casual players.UR’s “A Team” finished in fourth place in the Williams tournament and were proud to have Eisele receive the “Neg Award” for most incorrect answers given before the speaker could finish the question.On Nov. 12, UR’s team traveled to Canada to participate in two tournaments at Brock University in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. These were also TRASH-style tournaments, allowing a UR team to capture fourth place and pick up another Neg Award along the way, this time earned by senior Colleen Griffin.The next day, one UR team competed in an academic-only tournament at the same school. UR played close to the top but lost first place to Alfred University.Last weekend, UR hoped to improve on its latest efforts in two tournaments, the first being Technophobia at Rutgers University-Newark. Despite their best efforts, UR teams delivered a one-two punch to the bottom of the rankings, finishing seventh and eighth out of eight teams. The next day, the teams traveled to Columbia University to compete with many of the same teams that they had faced a day earlier. These results were better, netting UR a fourth-place finish. However, some question how the rankings were determined. “The results from Rutgers were curious,” Arsenoff said. “We finished with a better record than the third place team, so I don’t know how they beat us.”The Thelion Society hopes to continue its season by qualifying for several national tournaments in the spring. If the teams qualify, they will compete against teams from across the country for national quiz bowl dominance. “We lost some strong players last year, but we are holding our own, and we’re hoping to qualify,” Blake said.Majarian can be reached at mmajarian@campustimes.org.