After two more grueling rounds of quiz bowl, VA A and VA B finish with 6-1 and 5-2 records respectively. Before they go out for lunch, Warren announces the following to their players:
“It pains me to admit it, but even though Saturday night is not the best time to visit a college campus, we will tour Emory after dinner. After all, Emory seems a realistic choice for all of you to attend, and maybe play quiz bowl for them!” Warren tells the VA quiz bowlers.
“Why tour Emory at night?” Scott asks the coach. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to tour Emory during the day?”
“In the summer, Emory does not have nearly as many students on campus on Saturdays, regardless of whether it’s at day vs at night”
Oh boy. I wonder if I can realistically attend Emory, assuming I stay a straight-A student, and Audrey to play basketball for them. Or Heather, for that matter, Pablo is reminded of the cold, hard truth of Emory when Leonard, the A-team history player explains what kind of grades and ACT scores are typical of Emory admits.
“As I will attend Emory next fall, I will be our tour guide tonight at Emory” Leonard explains to the students.
“Until then, what about we eat lunch and we then go to the College Football Hall of Fame?” Pablo explains to Audrey. “I’ll even pay for your ticket provided you have your student ID!”
“In which case I will pay for the lunch” Audrey tells him while everyone else went their own way to get their lunches.
And, as such, they don’t feel like eating at Sear, no more than High Velocity is going to be for them. For months, neither ate Asian food of any kind and, as such, they go to the Pacific Rim Bistro. Upon entering the restaurant, they find it full of HSNCT participants, many of which came from the coasts.
“Here’s our opportunity to eat what we never had a chance at home!” Pablo tells her when they get seated in the restaurant.
And yet, we know that Asian players are much more common in quiz bowl than in basketball or football. Fingers crossed that Audrey has gotten over the loss at Pearl River... Pablo is reminded of the players on opposing teams and how the demographics differ wildly from basketball to football or quiz bowl.
After a while, the time comes for them to place the order:
“Chicken Panang curry for me” Audrey places her order.
“Tom Yum soup for me” Pablo orders his meal, too.
“How spicy?” the waiter asks both.
“Hot” both people tell the waiter.
These meals make their mouths heat up and drink iced water. I guess, it’s good to eat new meals once in a while, but Panang curry isn’t something I would eat regularly. No more than I would eat pelekie zirni regularly either... Audrey muses about what she’s eating. Pelekie zirni might be good if I wanted chickpea salad.
“Thank God that we aren’t playing games this afternoon! Hopefully this will subside by tomorrow morning...” Pablo still feels like his mouth is on fire.
Poor Audrey! Even chugging iced water only dented into her sensation of burning! Pablo then hurries up eating his Tom Yum soup. And yet, by doing so, he feels his hunger has been cut, having eaten less than half of his bowl before he feels full. That’s even hotter than the hottest chili con carne I ate in my life!
“Are you OK, Pablo?” Audrey asks him, under the not-so-nice looks of other diners, while he feels like his blood is turning into molten metal.
“No... Please pay the... bill! I’m out of here!” Pablo’s pains intensify with a half-eaten bowl of Tom Yum soup he’s struggling to eat.
For about $50, the pair hurries up to pay the bill and then gets out of the restaurant.
They then proceed to go to the College Football Hall of Fame by foot, where they have their student IDs at the ready. The box office attendant asks them some questions upon checking their purple and green student IDs:
“Venomous Agendas... High?” the attendant is taken aback by the school name on their student ID cards, suspecting these are fakes.
“We play at the HSNCT, our school is real; NAQT would never let us compete if our school was fake!” Audrey pleads with the attendant, whipping out her cell phone and showing the Jefferson Davis Parish School Board’s site.
“Where the hell is Jefferson Davis Parish?”
“Southwest Louisiana” Pablo answers the attendant. “It’s what people in other states call a county”
The two blush upon seeing the attendant questioning them about VA as if their student ID cards were counterfeit. That, even though they knew that its name would uniquely identify VA. The attendant then asks them for additional state-issued ID.
But only once they provide additional ID could the attendant issue tickets with the student discount. Pablo then pays for the two tickets as soon as he can get confirmation of the student discount.
The couple sticks together, and begins their visit of the museum with a wall of helmets. Hundreds of teams are represented from every conference, every division of college football.
“Now that’s a lot of football teams!” Pablo exclaims upon seeing a three-story high wall of helmets, with no two helmet being the same.
“Often people not familiar with football seem to think the key players are the quarterback, and then running backs and wide receivers. They would forget about everyone else, even though we both know no single player can do everything on their own”
“Time to hit the playing field, I guess…” Pablo sighs, still feeling a little off from Tom Yum soup.
The playing field contains several spaces dedicated to specific football drills, such as a regulation goalpost and agility drills. And Pablo blazes through what feels like a slalom course, followed by a kicking attempt.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“You always acted as if you couldn’t use football as a vehicle to get to college. But you have some talent” Audrey tells him before attempting the same drills herself.
On the gridiron, Audrey reminds me of a much taller version of Addy Edwards; she played wide receiver at VA when I last heard about her. Audrey would probably be a good WR, CB or FS; I have seen our opponents field players whose WRs, CBs or FS end up playing basketball as well, Pablo reflects on where Audrey would have fit on the VAs’ football depth chart if she swapped quiz bowl for football.
“Talent? I might have agility, but my lack of consistency, both on the gridiron and on the buzzer, has hurt me some…”
“Pablo, I saw you play at that game against South Beauregard. I really mean what I said about the athletic talent you have”
“In quiz bowl, I guess I could have counted myself lucky to play with Nadine and Lilina. They are consistent players, poised to become the town’s stars next season. We can cover for each other’s inconsistencies in quiz bowl, which hasn’t been the case in football this season!”
Then the pair moves to another exhibit of the museum: the fight song karaoke. The system allows the users to pick which college’s fight song to sing along, and, predictably, because Heather made Audrey obsess over playing in the Ivy League, Audrey picks an Ivy at random to sing its fight song. The Yale Bulldogs’.
“Your turn, Pablo” Audrey tries to encourage him, but he freezes in place, unsure of which fight song to sing.
Pablo is reminded of the cold, hard truth: he feels like he should start narrowing down what he wants in a college. Especially when his grades started going up this year, partially because of his involvement in quiz bowl.
“I guess, I could always sing the Green Wave’s fight song…” Pablo sighs. “Not that I would be playing for the Green Wave”
As he sings Tulane’s fight song, he realizes that his singing is a little awkward, but he didn’t mind Audrey being an awkward singer either.
“It’s now that I realize why Heather is singing the national anthem at VA home girls’ basketball games. She has the most singing talent on the basketball team”
“Yeah, I guess... You can’t be good at everything, and Heather sure as hell wouldn’t be a good quiz bowler, even a math and science one, because she excels at multiple-choice questions, but lacks curiosity”
Then the couple moves to the next exhibit, the ESPN College Game Day Desk. Once they get to the exhibit, Pablo takes on the role of a play-by-play commentator, with Audrey being the color commentator.
“Welcome to the Yale Bowl for this game between the Yale Bulldogs and the Tulane Green Wave. We all know that Tulane plays in a higher division. However, because both teams are held to similar academic standards in recruiting, this game has the potential to be competitive, especially since Yale has the home field advantage tonight” Audrey starts talking about some simulated game between them.
“For Tulane to win tonight, the Green Wave will need not to overuse pass or rush”
The American, in which Tulane plays, is not a Power-4 football conference, and the Group of 6 (the Pac-12 was relegated to it) isn’t necessarily much stronger than FCS ball, Pablo is reminded of the cold, hard truth, even though he knows that Green Wave fans often feel like Tulane is, on an athletic level, much like an Ivy but with athletic scholarships. They are then treated to a simulacrum of a Tulane-Yale football game playing out on a screen in front of them. Which doesn’t last very long, just a few downs. They act as though they were on TV.
“How do you feel about this aspect of college football?” Pablo asks her.
“By now you know that, the higher the academic requirements, the farther afield colleges must look for players. It won’t be like LSU, where the majority of players will be Louisiana residents, or at least the biggest chunk of the roster”
“Oh I get it, communities won’t necessarily hold the same attachment to a college team as they would a high school one because of the need to go far afield to fill a roster”
“That, even though LSU is by far the biggest name in Louisiana college sports, and certainly football...”
Speaking of LSU, the two learn about the place of LSU among the greatest players in college football history. About LSU being one of the most esteemed football programs of the nation, but not consistently on the level of Notre Dame, OSU, Michigan or Alabama. About what made these players great. And also about how dominant the Ivy League was in the early days of the game.
“It seems like people value offense more than defense in football. There just aren’t nearly as many inductees playing defense in any capacity” Pablo points out. “Yet this season’s VA football stars played on the defensive line!”
“It seems like sports often run in families. Heather’s older brother played DT, yours played long snapper, Carrie’s older brother also played basketball and dated Chantal...” Audrey tells him, triggered by an exhibit talking about a hall of famer’s family involvement in sports.
“I vaguely heard about Albert when I was in middle school, but I never interacted with Logan much. I knew him by name but that’s it”
However, I wonder just how awkward it would have been for Logan to be dating ultra-brilliant Chantal when he wasn’t anywhere near her intellectual level; for years, she was one of the town’s resident geniuses, Pablo is reminded of just how aggressively parish media covered Chantal, and the whole debate team along with her, back then.
And, of course, this trip to the College Football Hall of Fame gave them a lot to think about. About life trajectories of ex-college athletes. About how some of them might have trouble adjusting to life after sports. Because they have come to realize that, in football and basketball, star players may not always transition well to the next level.
“As much as success in high school sports doesn’t guarantee you anything in college sports, I might be wondering about the long-term benefits of playing quiz bowl” Pablo sighs.
“Speaking of quiz bowl, this place is about to close. And yet we learned so much about the evolution of the game as well as the players’ life trajectories after graduation, as well as life off the field” Audrey has Pablo dash to the exit.
And then the others went their separate ways in the meantime. When they get together for their visit to Emory, they ask each other where they have been, before boarding the bus to get them to Emory’s campus.
“I went to the World of Coca-Cola!” Gerard exclaims in front of the other players.
“We simply went to other quiz bowl games” Lilina and Nadine both tell the others. “We will return to the HSNCT next year, we can always do sightseeing then!”
“I kept tabs on the wagers my mom placed on horse races, so I couldn’t really do as much as I would have liked” Myriam adds.
“Myriam, are you sure that you weren’t the one gambling on horse races online?” Leonard asks her.
“My mom paid for all of us to be here and even eat food we couldn’t have at home! She gambles almost as a second job!” Myriam answers an irritated teammate.
“You didn’t forget about us begging money?” Lilina refers to Pablo and herself.
“It’s only the second time I came here. The first time was with my oldest child playing as a special topics player” the bus driver tells them.
“Oldest? Who are your younger kids?” Warren asks him as the bus leaves the parking lot in which it’s parked. “They never took AP Bio!”
“Paige is my youngest daughter. She was very much not a quiz bowler. Anyway, the reason why I chose to drive the team here is because no other driver on the parish’s payroll has relatives who play, or played, quiz bowl”
She could barely clear a 3.5, which made her feel like she just didn’t have what it takes to play quiz bowl for VA. My oldest son, however, attended Whitman College on the back of his HSNCT participation, the bus driver ruminates on his children’s dealings with academia as he drives the team to Emory, as he did some six years prior.
But then they tour Emory into the evening after having eaten at restaurants around the university. However, unlike NSU two months ago, for the underclassmen, the novelty of visiting a college campus has worn out for them.
“It’s ok to aim for Emory and the like. Remember, guys, however: grades, ACT scores and quiz bowl success aren’t everything!” Leonard warns the players, especially Myriam and Scott, for whom it’s pretty apropos.
“If you actually end up attending Emory or other colleges of that caliber or higher, you will go from an environment where you were used to operate in a rarefied world because of your intellect, to a world where everyone will be like you! Maybe the HSNCT will help you soften the blow somewhat, but nothing should be taken for granted!” Warren issues another warning.