The following day, he gets an email from Warren inviting him to a special training session in the morning, where he's given an overview of the rules of quiz bowl. Shoot! Instead of being there for my conditioning training session, I have to do quiz bowl training before class! What would I hope to accomplish by playing on the quiz bowl team? Beyond parental pride, and college applications, obviously, a Pablo stricken by self-doubt is secretly questioning why he would even play quiz bowl. Reading quiz bowl questions is one thing, but knowing what to expect from questions is not enough.

When he arrives at school, he goes directly to Warren's office as he prepares the buzzer for the introduction to quiz bowl. And a few sample questions from past tournaments the VAs attended, by difficulty levels.

"Welcome, Pablo. To begin, tossups are worth ten points, or fifteen if you answer early enough, or power. You have three seconds to answer once you buzz in. Also, if you answer incorrectly, buzz in first, and do so before the question is read in full, you will incur a five-point penalty, a neg five..." Warren explains the rules of quiz bowl to him, as well as what bonuses are, and games usually ask 20 tossups.

At first, the tight end feels a little shaky on the buzzer, since reading packets is not the same as playing. That, even though the clues are given out in describing order of difficulty. And the first question is a question of one of the most important games in VA quiz bowl history.

"The answer was Kim Thuy" Warren tells him the correct answer to the first tossup.

"Are questions always this hard?" Pablo asks, while failing to answer it.

Why did I even join the quiz bowl team? Do I really have what it takes to play with three of the smartest kids on campus? Pablo starts questioning his choice of playing quiz bowl.

"No. This was the winning tossup of the first state championship, so you have a better idea of what playing at quiz bowl-State will feel like, if you make it to the team for State" Warren then skips to the next tossup. "The fall of Smederevo on June 20, 1459, marked the full conquest of this country by the Ottoman Empire. The Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution was an event that led to this country breaking away from Yugoslavia. The Pannonian Plain covers its northern third. For ten points, name this country whose capital is Belgrade"

"Serbia" Pablo reluctantly answers after being read the question in its entirety.

"That was a question at the HSNCT"

And more specifically a question the VAs missed against DCC three years ago, causing their elimination. He reads bonuses, and Pablo realizes that question categories are random.

I might be jittery now, but I need to see with whom I will play, Pablo ruminates. I wonder how that is going to help me go to college, since I can't rely on football, or at least solely on it...

After school, there comes his first practice with the VAs' quiz bowl team, Pablo trembles like a leaf, especially after his practice with an overview of quiz bowl before class that made him a little wary of playing.

"Please welcome Pablo, he will play on the B-team at the LQBA Fall invitational in two weeks as our special topics player. Now, he's not like the classical quiz bowlers we had here up to this point, as he played tight end on the football team" Warren introduces Pablo to his quiz bowl teammates.

"Did we scrape the bottom of the barrel to get a replacement player?" Myriam asks, finding it hard to believe that the football team would designate one of their own to play quiz bowl.

"You have a long way to go!" Josiane, the middle schoolers' special topics player, comments on Pablo's origins. "However, everyone has to start somewhere, so make your experience of your first tournament count!"

"Yeah, Pablo, don't go around thinking you can neutralize an opposing player in quiz bowl the way you can in football!" Scott jeers at him. "Has your brain sufficiently healed from your latest concussion to play quiz bowl?" his voice betrays some sarcastic undertones.

"I will show you all that football players can play quiz bowl!" Pablo shouts, but his new teammates seem to make thins uncomfortable for him. "Don't go around thinking that my sport dumbs me down!"

Pablo is then grouped with his other 3 teammates for the LQBA Fall Invitational, in the absence of Audrey, off at a basketball practice. But already the A-team doesn't make him welcome, and they only spent a few minutes with him. It's my freshman football season all over again, only with football replaced with quiz bowl, Pablo gets into position for a drill with a mixture of middle school and B-team high school players.

"For ten points each, answer these questions on exoplanets" a substitute teacher is made to read the bonus in a drill.

Shoot! I know nothing about exoplanets, other than they orbit other stars the way Earth orbits the sun, Pablo seems like he can't answer anything on this bonus.

During the practice, he realizes that Josiane may very well be right, and that he has a lot of ground to cover. And that, even though they aren't necessarily the best, the other players still manage to buzz in much more often than he did. And answer more often than he does in bonuses, too.

Yet, near the end of the drill, after failing to answer anything, tossup or bonus, Pablo, after hearing about transcription errors, buzzes in:

"mRNA!" Pablo answers after buzzing in.

"Fifteen" the substitute teacher rules.

"Is that it? You answered a grand total of one tossup for the entire drill?" Nadine, the B-team arts and literature player, asks him, almost as to belittle him.

"Give me a break! It's only a week since I started playing, I have to start somewhere!" Pablo retorts to his fellow B-team player.

There's no way I can last the rest of the season on this team if I don't improve as a player! I could only have read so many packets in a few days' time! Pablo feels his blood rising to his face, and his face is turning red.

"If you want to win buzzer races, you must have an answer primed in your mind if possible!" Warren gives some advice to him. "Also, please keep in mind that quiz bowl is not school, even though it might be of help for school! You're not graded in games, and being able to determine when you don't know stuff is important, too! If you find yourself missing a lot of questions in specific areas, you should focus your studying in these areas"

"That's a lot of things you have to study for!" Nadine yells at Pablo as his mood is visibly deteriorating.

And he starts getting more headaches, too. As he realizes he has a lot of holes in his knowledge base, he comes to a grim realization: between here and the tournament, he can't improve that much, so he must find a way to improve on what his current teammates don't know. Or to at least learn more about what he feels is most realistic to learn as much of the quiz bowl canon as he possibly can by that date.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"So here's the goal for you, Pablo: average ten PP20TUH at the LQBA Fall Invitational South and start with regular sets on the Quiz Bowl Packets Database. Do card, and also review older material in class as necessary"

"Considering that we are in the most academically competitive environment in southwest Louisiana, you're going to have your work cut out for you!" Caleb feels like Pablo will struggle a little bit, and then chuckles.

Nadine... I didn't interact with her much, but I have her in another course! Maybe I can ask her for help in that class, or for quiz bowl, if Audrey can't help me! And I have the feeling that she won't be able to help me as much as she would have liked! Pablo makes a mental note of when to access other players. And I only read a handful of sets over the weekend, he is reminded of the sheer number of packets he could read. And, of course, endure more quiz bowl drills before he could actually read more question sets.

"One question, coach: is this representative of the teams we will be playing later this month?" a confused Pablo asks him before the final drill starts for high school players.

"If you're talking about the drills with the B team mixed in with the middle school team, I say it would be middle of the pack" Warren tells him in front of his new teammates.

I will need to study a lot just to survive on the team until the end of the LQBA Fall Invitational South, Pablo has a shiver down his spine as the middle schoolers are now on their own because the substitute teacher is gone. The high schoolers are then assembled for one last drill.

"Here it is: a scrimmage game between the A and B teams!" Warren announces to them.

"Pablo, it might feel a little bizarre to you but sometimes, to improve, you need to get blown out. However, better get blown out now, in a practice, than in a tournament!" Scott makes his opening remarks about the drill.

The two teams are arrayed and get read questions about a wide range of topics, as usual for quiz bowl. However, Pablo quickly realizes that he barely scratched the surface of what is truly needed to do well on the buzzer.

And yet, he takes a risk that bewilders everyone in the room on a geography tossup:

"The Punch-up in Piestany took place during the World Hockey Juniors staged in this country in 1987" Warren reads the first clue of this tossup as Pablo buzzes in.

"Czechoslovakia" Pablo answers.

"Fifteen"

How could I somehow get this one right, when I struggled to even buzz in on all other questions today? Was I lucky in my packet readings? Pablo keeps questioning himself, believing that him powering this question is a matter of luck. Beginner's luck.

But then it so happens that Nadine brilliantly answers all 3 bonus parts attached to this tossup because it's an arts and literature bonus.

Darn it! Am I even going to survive on the quiz bowl team until this tournament? Pablo starts hyperventilating before the next question cycle starts.

"Timeout..." an increasingly nauseated Pablo asks Warren at the end of this bonus.

"Just go home for today. This practice has been a real roller coaster for you..." Warren gives his instructions to him.

Once Pablo gets out of the room the practice takes place, his dizziness makes it more difficult for him to move, as he trembles to get to the nearest bathroom. Headaches start to mount at every step, and he feels the urge to vomit. He is also suddenly reminded of panic attacks endured by his football teammates in past games as his stomach starts to hurt him. And, lumbering towards the toilet, he groans, and he feels the need for rest.

Then comes his time to vomit in the first available toilet. As much as he would have liked to feel relief through vomiting, there's only so much vomiting could do.

"How am I going to play quiz bowl if I can barely answer one tossup per game?" Pablo screams from his toilet stall and starts crying as well. "This is so not the image of quiz bowlers this community sold to us for years!"

He keeps babbling incoherently about how this practice makes him feel incompetent, about whether he should even keep playing quiz bowl, or even about what it would take for him to pull some semblance of weight on the B-team. That, knowing everyone else on it is still, in his mind anyway, in the top-5-10% of their respective classes.

At this point, Pablo took so long to get to the bathroom, vomit, and drink from the fountain that, once he gets out of that place, he comes across Nadine, who finished the drill.

"Now that you're on the quiz bowl team, you will be known as a smart kid, and all the expectations that come with it" Nadine tells him, while he is trying to calm down.

"As a football player, the spotlight might be on me, so to speak, for one-third of the year, but you make me feel like quiz bowl will get me into the spotlight for the remaining two-thirds of the year?" Pablo asks about the social implications of playing quiz bowl.

And Audrey's basketball practice ends more or less at the same time as Pablo's quiz bowl practice. She overhears Nadine talking about how Pablo's life is expected to change now that he's playing quiz bowl, and her ears perk up.

"If you perform academically at the level people usually imagine quiz bowlers to perform at, people will be more tempted to cheat on you" Audrey warns her friend.

And certainly on Nadine's level or mine. I won't mince words, the quiz bowl team is very top-heavy academically, Audrey can tell on Pablo's face that he's wracked with self-doubt over a quiz bowl practice.

"I guess, I now have a better idea of what I need to practice for quiz bowl. There's only so much I can learn only by reading past sets!" Pablo sighs. "Even if I prioritize more recent sets!"

"You must also ensure that you're in the right head space to make the most out of studying. You're probably familiar with this concept as applied to games, though; after all, even as a tight end, the mental pressures of football don't spare you" Audrey adds, while Nadine leaves the scene. "Just don't focus solely on quiz bowl, will you?"

"It's probably nothing new to you, it's just that, during football season, football tends to crowd out academics" Pablo points out, and then sobs. "I was barely able to answer one tossup per packet in practice..."

"You're new to quiz bowl, and I started out in middle school, which eased me into the high school game. Also, you're coming from farther out than I did. But right now, you must do something other than quiz bowl practicing. Maybe you can resume reading more packets once the panic attack subsides"

When football is in season, people were more forgiving to me academically; they accepted an academic hiccup as the price to pay for playing football. However, Audrey has a point. I knew all 3 people I will be playing with at LQBA Fall Invitational South were very good students, Nadine, but also Lilina and Gerard, whom I also knew for years, too, despite not interacting much with them, Pablo is still shaking when it dawns upon him that AP Bio is one of the courses he does best in. And yet I'm not starting from scratch.

"Just do your homework for now" Audrey advises him before he leaves for home and buckles down to do his homework for the day.

"Thank you, Audrey, for setting the record straight" Pablo realizes that his homework for the day covers topics such as history and language arts.

Upon returning home, he still feels some lingering doubts over his first quiz bowl practice. And he wonders whether it has been a huge mistake for him to play quiz bowl. However, he hasn't technically burned his second allowance for the year yet, since students can, under the Rule of Two, leave any Rule of Two-subject team at any time if they didn't compete (or perform in the cases of band and theater).

His parents pick up on his mood changes when they return home.

"Pablo, it seems like you're not like your usual self. What happened?" Pablo's dad asks him in the middle of him doing his history homework.

"I now realize that I have a long way to go to make it in quiz bowl" Pablo starts crying, before he could explain the entire thing.

"Give yourself some time, it's not instant" Pablo's dad sermons him.

Audrey then texts him the link to the LQBA Fall Invitational South's logistics information. Such as the updated start time.

"Dad, I know it's a bit early to tell you this, but the tournament is at eight AM on November seventeenth"

"Oh boy, to get there in time, we'll need to leave this town by five AM, no thank you. Please tell me once the team will have figured out the transportation arrangements" Pablo's father instructs him. "Now you have a better idea of what language arts and social studies will be useful for: quiz bowl"

With that said, he goes around and ask his quiz bowl teammates over text messages for more details about where to meet and when so they can get to the tournament, and then he goes back to reading different sets of quiz bowl question packets.

And boy is there a lot of packets to choose from; however, he starts re-reading his class notes in language arts and social studies, both from this year and last year, in hopes of gleaning knowledge he could use in quiz bowl. Last year, I might have had some relatively good grades, but I mostly crammed the material. Now I need to revisit it, and then I can resume reading these older packets, he keeps to himself while he waits for his teammates' response.