The following day, Imélie receives an email from LQBA, or Louisiana Quiz Bowl Association, calling for staffers for the state championship, with the tournament director being the LQBA president. The first thing that comes to Imélie's mind is that they're still short on staffers for the tournament. "Due to a shortage of staffers, and given your past record as a quiz bowler, both in high school and in college, I hereby invite you to be part of the moderation team at the LQBA State Championship, held at Lafayette High School this year on March 18th. P.S.: you're nominated as a candidate for a seat on the LQBA Board" Imélie skims over what matters most to her out of the email from the LQBA president.

In the attachment is contained the rules of the championship, the field and how teams could qualify for it. So much has changed since I was in high school; LQBA didn't even host a state championship for middle school, now they do. What hasn't changed is that only one team per school could enter and qualifying for it requires going into the playoff stage of any given LQBA-sanctioned tournament. All it took for the coach and the administrators of my high school to start caring about the team was making it into the state championship, and the rest is history; Florence and I were both better than the existing players, as well as the player we replaced, Imélie thinks while attempting to formulate an answer to the LQBA's outgoing president, Vance.

"Oh Sun, we almost never take trips out of town; here's our chance to have one together next Saturday" Imélie suggests to Sun.

"Where to?" Sun asks her.

"Lafayette. I'm invited by the LQBA president to participate as a referee, or moderator, as they are often called in the quiz bowl world, at the high school quiz bowl state championship"

Staffers, as they are called, include, in quiz bowl tournaments, moderators (who both read the questions and ref the game) and scorekeepers, so there are two people per game room. Typically, this is one of the main bottlenecks for any prospective tournament director on the field size since the preliminary rounds require a minimum size, another bottleneck is buzzer availability. I recognize the LQBA president's name; he reffed several of the games I played in high school, both at the LQBA Fall Invitational and at the state championship senior year! He seemed to like both Sadie and I for our playing ability back then, but he didn't ref any of our games at the state championship the year I first played there, Imélie thinks before Sun answers her.

"I'll go on this trip with you. Now I'll finally get a chance to see what you love about quiz bowl so much!"

"I'm not actually playing. In the quiz bowl world, even for tournaments as important as state championships, refs are often hard to come by. So much so that teams capable of providing a ref or a scorekeeper are given a discount on their entry fees. When even that fails, then the tournament director asks other people that had experience of playing quiz bowl at the level of the tournament to fill the gaps; being a referee is harder than being a scorekeeper, especially given how fast-paced quiz bowl is at the state championship level" Imélie then explains to a clueless lover.

"How does the tournament work?"

"The format of the state championship is not consistent on a yearly basis. This year there are two high school divisions, large schools, and small schools, for a combined total of twenty-four schools in the field. Sixteen and eight. Teams are divided into two pools for the large school division, seeded based on their regular season records and playing in round-robin, but, in the small school division, everyone plays each other once. The best six teams in the large school division advance to the playoffs, and finally one last game for the top four teams at the end of the playoffs, if tiebreakers are needed for a top-three position"

In the middle school state championship, there are 12 teams this year; however, teams play fewer games because the pools are smaller. Presumably the LQBA president is aware of my inexperience as a moderator and thus does not want me to mod a playoff game, Imélie thought, while knowing that a bad moderator can ruin a game, and, for some teams, even ruining an entire tourney.

Since the LQBA State Championship runs on NAQT questions and rules, Imélie should be comfortable with the rules aspect of reffing quiz bowl games. But there is more to quiz bowl reffing than simply dealing with the rules; there is also the dealings with the teams, especially coaches if they are prone to protesting.

On the morning of the 18th, several teams arrived, such as Lafayette, before the couple did, and they were busy testing the buzzers they brought to ensure they were functional. Plus they need to make sure that, for every room that the local organizers labeled the night before, desks are properly positioned.

When the Venomous Agendas arrive a few moments later, wearing the purple and the green, their coach immediately recognizes Imélie for whatever reason.

"Sun, you can watch any game you want, I will be staying in the same room to ref games all morning" Imélie tells her lover before turning to the Venomous Agendas' coach, Warren.

"If that's how it's going to be, I may as well stay in the room you are reffing quiz bowl games in until you're finished reffing these games"

"We've got years of catch-up to do, Imélie. But not now. Maybe after the tournament ends" Warren then tells his former player.

When the room assignments for moderators are given by the tournament director, after a brief meeting where the less-experienced moderators are given a run-down of the rules, Imélie then realizes that she is assigned room #7, which is fairly close to the control room, owing to her lack of experience of quiz bowl moderation. Meanwhile, teams also had a meeting of their own in the auditorium prior to the beginning of the tournament proper. Once Imélie is seated, with the packet in hand:

"This is round one of the 2034 LQBA high school State Championship. This game pits South Lafourche against Vandebilt Catholic. Tossup number one: While staying at one of these places, the protagonist of a novel evades a food poisoning outbreak caused by poisoned crabmeat. The protagonist of a novel primarily set in one of these places reveals his whale-covered boxer shorts and offers Juicy Fruit to the narrator. The protagonist of that novel set in one of these places organizes a fishing trip and watches the World Series with the Acutes. The protagonist loses her virginity to Irwin and dumps Buddy Willard in a novel centering on these places" Imélie reads when a buzzer rings.

"Hospital" a Fighting Tarpon player answers.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"More information, please... no answer? Neg five. A character slits himself in the throat after sleeping with Candy at one of these locations, where authority forces are referred to as "The Combine." A novel set in "the summer when they electrocuted the Rosenbergs" depicts Esther Greenwood's time at one of these places. The Bell Jar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are both set in, for ten points, what centers for mental illness treatment?"

"Psychiatric hospital" the Terrier player answers much later.

"Ten. In this leader's last public appearance, people shouted "Timisoara" in reference to an uprising that he violently suppressed. For ten points each, name this long-time Communist leader of Romania. This man and his wife's execution was nearly caught on live television following a 1989 revolution"

"Ceaucescu"

"Ten"

Fast-paced all right, especially since teams have 3 seconds after a question is read in full, assuming teams do not attempt to power an answer. Questions are read at a rapid rate, and three toss-ups down the road, Vandebilt's coach lodges a protest regarding South Lafourche's response to the tossup. She then stops the clock to adjudicate the protest.

"The moderator accepted an answer from player number four, but player three was the one who buzzed!" Vandebilt's coach complains.

"Both players gave the same answer, and player number four answered at the same time as player number three. When two players on the same team give an answer simultaneously, this determination of simultaneity is not protestable. You might have heard player four louder than player three however, hence the confusion. Tossup number five: One concerto for this instrument contains a tutti over the chords A major, E major, B minor, F sharp major, and has a motif of F-sharp F-sharp E D F-sharp A E" Imélie reads when South Lafourche's musician buzzes in.

"Violin"

"Fifteen"

Why do they always have to read questions this fast? Is the difficulty coming from the questions or the time constraints? Bar trivia, from what little of it I played, is much slower and has shorter questions, Sun wonders, while Imélie knows that she only has 30 minutes per game to cover 20 toss-ups and bonus cycles, and that's not counting the time it takes to cover the time required, and any possible protests as well as overtimes if necessary. Speaking of overtime, this game is tied 245-245 after the regulation 20 toss-ups, which means three more toss-ups must be read at this point of the game. After the third and final toss-up has been read in full, some clumsy Terrier drops his buzzer, while a Fighting Tarpon player tells the following at the same time...

"This man..."

"It's our turn to protest: it appears that player two has dropped the buzzer first and therefore should be considered as having buzzed" the South Lafourche coach lodges a protest.

"Has this devolved into a slap bowl game? Your player has engaged in illegal conferring!" the Vandebilt coach complains, in turn.

"Both teams inadvertently signaled, and neither one gave an answer. The tossup is dead"

The resulting quarrel, along with the score still being tied, albeit 255-255, after the overtime tossups, forces Imélie to consider the possibility of needing to obtain additional tossups from Vance as a cushion because she feels just having one tossup left in the packet may not be enough to break the tie, especially if that final tossup goes dead, that is, when neither team was able to answer before the timer expires. Which is exactly what happened to that last tossup.

"Please wait here while I obtain additional questions from the tournament director" Imélie tells the players before leaving the room.

As strangely exciting as this game could have been to the parents of players on both teams in attendance, this game is getting longer than they would have liked. Needing a fifth overtime TU? None of them could have believed it.

However, these teams' next opponents are waiting in their respective rooms for that specific game to finish, as well as the teams playing the next game scheduled to be played here. For this reason, she harbored hopes that the players and coaches would be on their best behavior for the next game.

"I need additional tossup questions for my game; it has gone to a fifth overtime tossup, so I exhausted my original packet" Imélie asks Vance.

"Here, take this packet; make sure you read questions in order should the need to use the extra packet arise in future games" Vance hands to her an envelope identified with the words "extra questions" containing 24 tossups and 24 bonuses, which, hopefully, should be enough to cover seven games' worth of replacement questions, and maybe even twelve.

"Thank you"

The game goes to a screeching halt after the fifth overtime tossup results in an interrupt from the Vandebilt Catholic player that previously dropped his buzzer on the third overtime tossup.

"And that's the game. South Lafourche wins, two hundred fifty-five to two hundred fifty"

EEK! What is going on here! I don't remember playing a game where both teams inadvertently signal that way! Imélie thinks while handing over the scoresheet, obtained from the scorekeeper, and the old packet to the TD after the game, while she picks up a new one, and the teams are ready to go.

Six games later, with most of the seven games featuring southern Louisiana teams, Sun comes up to her and makes some comments.

"Quiz bowl is faster than I imagined it to be! But the questions seem to mostly pertain to a certain range of topics. Is it the speed aspect that makes you like playing it, or some other aspect of the game?" Sun asks her.

"You're right that it forces people to think on their feet and also that certain topics are not allowed on quiz bowl packets. However, it is a state championship we're talking about, so don't go around expecting regular high school quiz bowl tournaments to be like this. When I played it, another core appeal of playing it was about learning things that you wouldn't normally have the chance to learn about. The game is about the pursuit and use of knowledge"

There are more experienced moderators than Imélie was, but some of the teams that got a discount for a moderator, or a scorekeeper, are eliminated, for all divisions, so the staffers they brought with them are no longer available to officiate any further games. They also needed to take their buzzers back if they also got a buzzer discount, and, at this point, the question is: are there enough moderators left for the playoffs to be played without her?

It turns out that the answer was no. So, as before lunch, she ends up officiating more games, at least one of them featuring familiar schools from her time as a high school quiz bowler. Surprisingly, the Majors, representing Kinder, a high school in a neighboring parish relative to the Venomous Agendas, and that Venomous Agendas always referred to as the neighboring parish, squeaked into the playoffs of the state championship. That was unexpected; in my time in high school, never would I have imagined the school we called the neighboring parish making it to medal contention at State, Imélie, bewildered by the Majors' success this year, kept to herself while that game in question was underway, which was the last game of her day at Lafayette.

When the award ceremony gets underway, and the medals given out to the middle school teams, then to the small schools division, and finally to the large schools division, Vance had an announcement to make before handing out certificates to top individual players at the state championship:

"On behalf of the LQBA Board, I hereby announce that new prizes are handed out for season-wide player achievement, as well as for the coach of the year" Vance announces from a podium on the auditorium's stage.

The Majors' coach won the Coach of the Year award, especially since the Majors won bronze and, with it, their ticket to the HSNCT, after failing to qualify for the state championship for many years. Next to last among this list of prizes they award was a prize for the best female rookie of the year.

"And the inaugural winner of the Imélie Tremblay Female Rookie of the Year Award is..." Vance speaks while a Mighty Lion drummer makes a drum roll.

LQBA named a prize after ME? I only played in two tournaments the season I could actually be called a rookie; did I somehow outplay other rookie female players at State that year, or play better than the female rookies on all 3 Louisiana teams at the HSNCT that year? Imélie muses, while she is being handed the crystal trophy of the prize so that she can then present it to the winner, another Major.