On Tuesday, after the euphoria of being given a scholarship offer dies down, life goes on and their academic work continues. The quiz bowl team’s prayers for a replacement player go unanswered: Warren searched high and low for a replacement player, but to no avail.
Which is a fact that Warren makes clear to the two as they come out of the weight room prior to going their own ways.
“Although LQBA Winter is still weeks away, the B-team will be benched for this tournament if it remains shorthanded!” Warren warns the couple before they start asking questions.
“I knew the benefits of a full roster, but did you have any luck with underclassmen?” Audrey asks the coach.
“No luck with underclassmen, and rotating middle schoolers in and out of the high school B-team won’t help! They’re not ready for the social aspect of high school quiz bowl!”
“It seems like a lot of people who could potentially play already ate up their allowances under the Rule of Two” Pablo points out.
By now it has become a chronic issue. As far back as 2024, where, one week before State, mental health issues got the best of a senior, and fights with the preexisting roster are common, Warren crosses his fingers, hoping that they won’t fight over the search for quiz bowl reinforcements.
“I guess the rest of the team had no luck either, but rather than looking for all-around academic all-stars, maybe stardom in one specific area could be better than nothing…” Audrey points out.
Pablo then texts Lilina and Nadine, as well as his football teammates, to look for people who, rather than being good all-around academically as they previously did (and often people in town assumed that quiz bowlers were) that they didn’t previously ask, if they were good in at least one of the following: language arts, social studies and STEM, irrespective of skills in other areas. But he makes it clear that flaws in other areas are more acceptable now.
Even with these new directives, Audrey still struggles to think of people she could feel would be willing to play quiz bowl for VA. I feel like we would stand a better chance with a non-senior, and potentially someone who might be willing to replace a spring sport with quiz bowl. Tanith might not be the most academically ambitious girl in the world, she then starts thinking about the B-team players’ relative quiz bowling strengths. Then again, I’m not 100% sure about what Cora can bring to the quiz bowling table that Tanith wouldn’t. However, I think it’s easier to give up on a sport when you already play another one, so I’d say Cora is our best bet.
“Making Cora give up on track for quiz bowl might be a stretch but I believe it’s our best bet” Audrey adds.
“My primary concern with Cora is that having multiple basketball players will cause us scheduling issues if, say, LQBA Winter, ESA Cade Cane Classic or, Heaven forbid, Mt. Carmel or Leesville, happened the same day as a basketball game” Warren voices his concerns before checking the LQBA schedule vs the girls’ basketball team schedule.
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Later that day, after the rest of the team reports the same lack of success in finding a replacement player, even with the widened net, Warren gets to Cora’s AP Bio section, which is also Lilina’s.
“Cora, come see me please...” Warren looks in her direction.
“What is it now?” a visibly irritated Cora asks the teacher.
“The quiz bowl team has not been able to get a replacement for Myriam after mental health issues got the better of her” Lilina retorts.
“What makes you think that quiz bowl is a good fit for me?” Cora asks, rolling her eyes. “I have my hands full with basketball for the rest of the winter, and track in the spring!”
“Your mind works very fast, and you learn very fast, too”
“How much of a time commitment does quiz bowl take?”
“You have maybe three quiz bowl tournaments left this season, perhaps four if someone else gets injured in such a way that they can’t play at State...”
“I think I need to talk about this to my parents before I decide between quiz bowl and track!”
Oh boy... This is seventh grade all over again. Back then, I was, like Audrey, torn between people encouraging me to do different things: basketball because I was tall for my age, quiz bowl because of my brains, and Kent actually referred me to the quiz bowl team, too! But Audrey and Nadine both beat the daylights out of me in quiz bowl back then, and still will today, Cora gets a flashback of these days.
When she returns home after the basketball practice, Cora has a lot to process. Around the dinner table with her parents...
“The AP Bio teacher wants me to be a backup quiz bowler, but playing quiz bowl would mean giving up on track!” Cora starts talking.
“Honey, you picked track because you feel like you would reap some sort of basketball benefit from track!” Cora’s mom points out.
“Yeah, you got faster, you ran the opening leg of the VAs’ four by four hundred, and you dabbled in both long and high jump, but it’s obvious that, even during track season, your athletic attention was split between basketball and track!” Cora’s dad is reminded of the painful reality of her teammates.
“Do you have any idea of which one between quiz bowl or track is more cost-effective?” Cora’s mom asks her.
“You never told me about the costs of track!” Cora protests. “However, from what I heard about the costs of quiz bowl, it’s like driving to five or six one-day track meets per year”
“That’s about the same in travel as a bad track season. On the other hand, you wouldn’t need to replace these track cleats anymore…” Cora’s mom answers her.
However, my daughter doesn’t expect to be playing at the HSNCT. Not that it would have mattered, Cora’s mom starts wondering about the costs of quiz bowl vs track.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“I’m glad we dodged a financial bullet by not letting you compete in debate freshman year! On top of that, the debate season would have interfered with basketball! Much more than quiz bowl” Cora’s dad sighs.
“But Dad, rather than telling me the debate team was too expensive, you believed freshman year that I wasn’t equipped for the topics debaters deal with! Yet, this group project in AP US Government had us make our own campaign platforms, and hence deal with these same topics! We all volunteered for the campaigns of whoever we most felt like supporting!”
“Speaking of which, January first can’t come soon enough!” Cora’s dad sighs, even though he knew that she could actually handle the rigors of that course.
“Quiz bowl would allow us to save some money, compared to track, but what benefits would it provide you that track wouldn’t?” Cora’s mom asks both.
“Alternatively, where do you see track in your future?”
“I see track as secondary to basketball, but quiz bowl as distinct”
I feel like Cora put too many eggs in the basketball basket. If basketball fails, what does she have? Her extracurricular record might be enough for LSU, or Tulane if she EDs there, but is too heavily skewed towards the athletic, Cora’s dad starts to realize that maybe Cora should stop treating basketball as her sole ticket for college.
“Quiz bowl, as far as I saw it, as far back as when you were in seventh grade, seems to be about absorbing lots of useless info. The question then becomes: would quiz bowl help you with college?” Cora’s dad fumes against his daughter.
“I’m smarter than you give me credit for! You let me take AP courses though”
“You have good grades, yes, but the only reason why I let you take AP courses is because it reduces your debt burden down the road! Contingent on getting certain scores on the corresponding AP tests!” Cora’s dad yells at her.
“What did Warren see in you that made him want you to play quiz bowl? You might have an A in AP Bio, but why you and not others in that course?” the small forward’s mom asks her.
“I already have quiz bowlers with me in that class, Gerard, Lilina and Nadine! They all have As in that course, too! He was looking for a replacement player for weeks, and it’s not just about memory or brains alone! Do you have any idea of where past VA quiz bowlers went to college, dad?”
“They went to the HSNCT, they had better stats than you, not sure there’s really a comparable to you!”
“But even as far back as seventh grade, I was suggested to give quiz bowl a try! And by the basketball coach no less! On top of that, you said it so yourself that quiz bowl was less expensive than track!”
Damn it! Audrey never discussed quiz bowl much with me, but if Susan over at Lacassine believed even Heather could be a viable quiz bowler, when no one in their right mind at VA would make her play quiz bowl... I am not even sure what made Kent refer both me and Audrey to the quiz bowl team when I was taking seventh grade social studies with him! Cora’s forehead seems to overheat.
“Just play quiz bowl, honey. Your body has accumulated too much mileage between track, AAU and varsity hoops!” Cora’s mom tells her.
“I hope you’re ready to go from being among the best intellectually to a world where you’re much closer to the bottom! It can be a traumatic experience, and you’ll experience it at some point in college! Or in basketball if you actually make it to some Division I roster, and both if you end up playing in the Ivy League!” Cora’s dad scolds his daughter. “Better experience it now than in college!”
“Fine, I will play quiz bowl, but that’s only to let my body recover!”
Now I have a better idea of why I didn’t play as well as I would have liked last night: my body wasn’t given sufficient recovery! Cora sighs, before resuming her homework and other coursework for the day. I guess, some seventh or eighth-grader will replace me in the 4x400 this season…
The following morning, Cora meets with Audrey before they set off for their classes, fresh out of the weight room, and makes a confession to her.
“My body started feeling the crushing weight of years of intense sports. This was why I didn’t play as well as I hoped against Lacassine” Cora weeps while Malcolm gets out of his locker room. “I think I should give up on track!”
“Cora, you can’t give up on track and blame it for one bad game!” Malcolm exhorts her. “You scored two free throws, though”
“I was still decent at dribbling the ball to the paint, and maybe pick up a rebound or two, but that’s all I was good for that night! No, Malcolm, I think my body is showing signs of fatigue. Perhaps playing quiz bowl could ease the pressure on my body”
“I knew you were smart, but not necessarily smart enough to play on the quiz bowl team!” Malcolm gasps, surprised at the suggestion.
“Malcolm, how smart do you think quiz bowlers need to be?” Cora asks Malcolm.
“Think of Audrey and the people she plays quiz bowl with…”
“Damn… the freaking brainiac of the hoops teams! Even she is a middle-of-the-pack player in the context of this quiz bowl team, to say nothing of Nadine or Lilina, whom I have in AP Bio, and quiz bowl focuses on one aspect!”
“You could be stronger in a different intellectual area that isn’t sports-related, and you just keep it to yourself!” Audrey adds. “Same holds of me, too…”
Grades have their limits. I am painfully aware of how I differ from these two. In how I think, in how I approach learning, and Cora, too, Audrey starts thinking about how Cora might struggle to find her footing as a quiz bowler.
Speaking of quiz bowl, before their next practice of the week, on Thursday, Audrey has one warning to issue to Pablo before the practice begins, however.
“Pablo, I know that you don’t seem to get along with Cora, but please don’t quarrel with her during quiz bowl practices. We’re in a tight spot right now on the buzzer, but the coach invited her to join the team for a reason”
“Of course not. However, you probably mean, the B-team is in a tight spot. And, of course, because she’s on the B-team, I won’t play with her much, at least not in the short term” Pablo feels awfully confident that Cora won’t somehow outplay either him or Audrey.
They then kiss each other before Warren explains the rules of quiz bowl to Cora, and introduce her to the remaining quiz bowlers.
“Today, a new player has joined the quiz bowl team. As I tell new players, I always say that quiz bowl is not school, and, while being good at school helps, you’re not graded. And, don’t worry about not performing well right out of the gate. Also, this season, there are no further tournaments expected to interfere with basketball games”
“I’m Cora, like Audrey, I also play on the basketball team, as a small forward”
“Yeah, while the VA community tended to make people feel like students with good grades are the foundation to build a quiz bowl team upon, just doing well in class is not the end of the story” Lilina tells her.
“I’m sure that, while you do know some things, there are some other people who get the same grades as even you but stick to prescribed content. You can get the B-team to the HSNCT, it’s a matter of knowing where your interests lie, and reading accordingly” Nadine advises the rookie quiz bowler.
It seems like a lot of the lower-ranked teams, the Leesvilles, Kinders of this world, hit the wall of needing to know stuff outside of schoolwork to succeed. Yes, the amount of work to put in does come into play, and it often seems like our opponents strap together high-GPA kids with no real thought. However, I think Cora’s athletic background would make her a serviceable choice since she’s more used to not getting everything always done right, Warren muses while he takes Cora to explain the rules of quiz bowl to her. And run down sample quiz bowl questions of varying difficulty and types, tossups and bonuses.
In the meantime, Nadine moderates the drill between the other remaining high schoolers, three on three. Nadine seemingly burns through a packet before Cora is done being lectured about the basics of quiz bowl.
At the end of the practice, during which Warren asked the others to give Cora a chance to buzz in, Audrey and Cora come together to ask a few questions about her experience of quiz bowl practice.
“Cora, how do you feel about quiz bowl now that you have a better idea of what it’s about?” Audrey asks her teammate.
“Stuff asked in these packets feels much more obscure than what we learn in class”
“That’s alright, just make sure you have realistic expectations. However, it goes to show that maybe we’re not that different”