In mid-March, South Lafourche hosts quiz bowl-State for the first time. The Venomous Agendas seek to avenge their close loss last year against, well, South Lafourche, who finished the last HSNCT in fifteenth place, falling to TJHSST. But with its best player now playing for the Tulane Green Wave, everyone else into quiz bowl-State's large schools division believed the Tarpons' other players wouldn't have improved enough to make up for their loss.

But unlike last year, where a tie-breaking game, dubbed the title game, was played between Hathaway and Bâton-Rouge Episcopal for the small high schools division, this year, it's the large high schools division that plays host to such a game. Pitting VA against South Lafourche, the VAs are neck-and-neck going into the third overtime tossup.

"Russian fairy tales describe this dish as being the banks of milk rivers" the moderator reads to both teams, as Oleg buzzes in, hoping to power the question.

"Kissel!" Oleg answers, in a heavy Russian accent.

"Fifteen, and that's the game. Score?" the moderator asks the scorekeeper.

"Venomous Agendas three hundred forty, South Lafourche three hundred twenty-five"

"Our new large high school state champions, the Venomous Agendas!" the moderator announces to the attendees.

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Fast-forward to the morning of the Friday before Memorial Day, where, in both Jennings and Hathaway, their local crowds are gathered in their respective schools' parking lots to catch one last glimpse of their favorites.

Especially since, as dominating as they have been among the Louisiana high school quiz bowl circuit, they're both resented by everyone else playing quiz bowl in the state. And not just Iowa or Lacassine. At VA, as the players are packing their baggage to last the entire Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta, the team doesn't suspect their rivals are about to lead them into a high-speed chase across Louisiana's portion of Interstate 10.

Both teams have their coaches drive the cars carrying their respective teams to the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, but early in the morning, Marianne seems to recognize Flo's white car as soon as she can recognize the license plate.

"Venomous Agendas detected, battle alert!" Marianne shouts inside the car, awakening sleepy students when they are being driven to Atlanta on eastbound Interstate 10.

"Coach, why can't you just let us sleep?" a sleepy Arkady complains to his coach, yawning after he voices his complaint next to Eddie.

Driven by an unspeakable rage, Marianne tries to close in as much as she can on Flo's car, believing that, in doing so, she can force Flo to accelerate and/or to change lanes.

Why is that motorist seemingly trying to run into me? Flo feels like the car behind her is driving a little too close for her comfort, and yet both quiz bowl teams are barely twenty km east of Jefferson Davis Parish.

As the two cars approach Crowley, Flo sees an eighteen-wheeler trying to enter the highway and thus merges into the left lane so that she can safely yield and then overtake the truck once the truck enters the highway. Which prompts Marianne to do the same as well, and then one of the players awaken when the truck's driver honks Marianne.

"We're being followed!" Cindy, awakened by the honking of the truck's horn, warns her teammates.

"All we can do is pray the occupants of the car behind us can't shoot at our tires" Monika, a VA quiz bowl player, then starts praying that the Hornets don't have guns onboard. After all, she is playing at the HSNCT after someone else got injured.

What do they have to gain by following us that closely if they don't overtake us? Flo now starts worrying about the speed limit. Which is still seventy miles per hour on this stretch of I-10 and drives at about that speed. How can I make the occupants of that car overtake us when they can't do so without getting over the speed limit? Slowing down a little bit? I'd risk colliding my rear bumper... She honks her own car's horn, even though Marianne is not even half a car length behind her.

Yet Marianne won't even attempt to overtake her, at least not for the time being, but Marianne certainly doesn't behave like a hypermiler. Especially, since the distance is too close to safely follow them, even though the gains in energy efficiency are obvious. In the Hornets' car, as they approach Rayne:

"Let's start the music: it's music others at school have played and recorded" Donalia announces, as she starts playing the heavy metal song on the car's audio system, using her cell phone's Bluetooth system.

Is American music always this loud and prone to screaming? Arkady starts wondering about Donalia's choice of music, as he starts getting the impression they are chasing the Venomous Agendas across the countryside, which may or may not include swamps on that stretch of I-10.

Marianne's reckless driving seems to be temporarily put to an end near Rayne since there's a squad car lying in wait on the freeway near it, even though, by staying behind Flo at that close a distance, she was able to remain within the speed limit. As much as Flo was able to anyway.

And since Marianne was following Flo far too closely until she sees the squad car, Marianne is forced to slow down so as to respect the two-second rule of thumb for safely following other vehicles from behind.

"Damn it! The police is in the area, don't drive too close!" the fourth Hornets player calls their coach out on her reckless driving.

"Ok, fine, you win, but there's only so much police can do. Wait until the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge; this is where the ride gets wildest while we're still in Louisiana!" Marianne warns the Hornets, believing the Atchafalaya Basin to be a mostly lawless stretch of I-10.

Yet, from the Hornets' current position, the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is still fifty kilometers away. This means that the pair will need to endure that long driving close to each other.

But when Marianne sees the start of the eastbound span of the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge in St. Martin Parish, she tries to overtake Flo, but the close distance Marianne followed the opposing coach's car forces her to accelerate.

"Oh no! We will not be overtaken that easily!" Flo whines while she accelerates past the speed limit.

"Watch out for the potholes!" Cindy yells while Flo narrowly misses a pothole.

Potholes... while rush hours aren't always that bad in the Atchafalaya Basin, why is it that, this time, it seems to feel like I'm driving on Autoroute 73? Autoroute 73 had its share of road rage, as much as you could get road rage on Friday mornings around Quebec City, Flo fails to realize that the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is nothing like the Pierre-Laporte Bridge in Quebec City. Even when blasting indie, French-language Quebec music from a playlist.

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"What makes this crossing of the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge different from past crossings of that bridge?" Flo asks her players, having crossed that bridge several times this season. "Other than the weather"

"Maybe, you know, the Hornets' quiz bowl team playing a giant game of cat-and-mouse against us?" Cindy answers without being completely sure, as Marianne's car is on the left lane, speeding past them.

We crossed the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge to attend the LQBA Winter Invitational South at Bâton-Rouge Episcopal in December, Mt. Carmel Invitational in January, and, of course, quiz bowl-State, another player starts feeling the dangers of this game of cat-and-mouse taking place on the bridge.

For the next twenty-five kilometers, they keep trying to overtake each other, and they all start feeling like they are in a rallye race.

"Now that's what I call reckless driving!" Oleg comments, shaken by riding twenty-five kilometers of brusque merging, and high-speed driving, despite the loud music being blasted in the car.

"I feel like the Hornets are doing this to disrupt our studying for the HSNCT!" Flo answers the reckless driving charges.

"You asked us to study from past collegiate sets! However, we can't do this if the car always seems to be shaking left and right!" Monika, a player, who's about to vomit, complains.

And yet, in the Hornets' car, Donalia switches from blasting indie heavy metal to blasting music from car races in films.

"We need a break, we need to stop for a bathroom!" Eddie starts complaining, his bladder filling up.

Their driving behavior makes both teams stop in Ramah, Iberville Parish. They both start calling each other names while they wait on their cars getting recharged as well as players going to the bathroom, or vomiting.

"Tabarnak! You're one reckless driver!" Flo starts venting about what happened in the Atchafalaya Basin, right in front of Marianne.

"Reckless driving? The most effective way to save energy is to tailgate vehicles in front of you!" Marianne retorts, while her players are vomiting.

"You made my players, as well as your own players, vomit! Nausea won't do them any good at the HSNCT! I can't believe you would be willing to make your opponents vomit just to get a quiz bowl edge!" Flo points at players from both teams vomiting at the edge of the charging station's parking lot.

"Vomiting? You seriously think I would want to make my own players vomit to get yours nauseated? I didn't get them to vomit on purpose!"

Seeing my own players vomit right in front of me makes me feel a little uncomfortable and that's not just because of the searing heat of the Atchafalaya Basin... However, I have great hopes for Donalia and Eddie going into the college application process. Sure Hathaway isn't as competitive as VA, but it sure as hell is more competitive than Wattpad High was, Marianne feels a little shaky upon seeing both Donalia and Eddie vomiting.

"That's enough! We had enough of your antics as a quiz bowl coach!" the fourth Hornet complains after vomiting. "You gave us chapters in AP textbooks to read, you drive so recklessly that you made all of us vomit!"

"This is worse than a detention!" Donalia adds to this chorus of complaints.

"Maybe someone else should drive us to Atlanta then..." Marianne suggests while the mental image of Hornets vomiting is still vivid. "Who here has at least a learner's permit?" Three of the four Hornets players raise their hands; Arkady is the only one who doesn't. She then turns to her best player. "Because you're our most responsible driver, Donalia, you will drive for the remainder of the tournament!"

I may as well try to look for a different job, as either assistant superintendent or principal, but I would be open to become superintendent directly, just not in Jeff Davis Parish, Marianne believes that maybe not dealing with the kids directly would be for the better, in which case she might prefer being a superintendent over being a principal.

As the day goes on, they drive through I-10 until Bâton-Rouge, then I-12 in its entirety (the end of which is just a few kilometers away from the Mississippi state line), then back on I-10 up to Mobile, then I-65 to Montgomery and, finally, I-85. Apparently without any further vomiting.

Good; Donalia's driving is much more prudent than Marianne's, a puzzled Eddie wonders why, suddenly, Marianne wanted to make the VAs vomit as Donalia parks the Hornets' car in the Marriott Marquis' garage. Earlier this season, she mostly drove as normal.

As night falls over Atlanta, however, the hungry VAs are looking to eat before they go to sleep. They, too, rotated drivers on the way to Atlanta, just not at the same time.

"You may eat wherever you want, just bring me the receipts and don't stray too far from the hotel!" Flo gives her instructions to the VA players after checking in at the Marriott Marquis, hotel first and then for the HSNCT.

And then the fatigue gets the best of them, but everyone chooses to eat what they couldn't get at home.

The following day, the Venomous Agendas find out they are assigned the morning session. As they get closer to the game room assigned to their card, after they pick up their card:

"Don't be nervous, nor shy, so even though this tournament is going to be harder than the regular season, or even quiz bowl-State, just treat this game as a game like another" Flo tells her players before they get seated.

"This is round one of the morning prelims of the 2040 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament. This game pits the thirty-five card with the three hundred eighty-one card. From Louisiana, we have Venomous Agendas, and from Missouri, we have Kickapoo. Best of luck to both teams. Here's tossup one" the moderator starts the game.

While, of course, Kickapoo is a regular at the HSNCT, never did they play VA. But somehow, in the second half of the game, one of the tossups seems to trigger the VAs:

"Here's tossup thirteen: A complication of this action involving fresh blood is called hematemesis" the moderator reads.

For some reason, it seems like this question makes one of the players feel nauseated, but not Cindy or Oleg. However, Cindy interprets Monika's signs of nausea as a signal for her to buzz in. A little prematurely perhaps, but she presses the buzzer like a syringe.

"Vomiting!" Cindy shouts.

"Fifteen" the moderator then goes on a blurb about the bonus the VAs earned.

That's by far the grossest tossup I ever heard in a quiz bowl tournament! It's a wonder I performed as well as I did in AP Bio... Monika's nausea intensifies. However, she can't call a timeout until the bonus ends.

"That's twenty for the bonus" the moderator rules, before the nauseated VA player signals that something is going wrong.

"Timeout" Monika asks, about to throw up.

Monika then has thirty seconds to receive further instructions from Flo about how to handle her nausea, as this question seems to cause her to vomit.

"You have seven minutes to vomit and then come back here, understood?" Flo gives Monika guidelines to follow to get better.

"Yes, coach" Monika nods.

"Remember: your health and well-being is more important than a prelim game"

Monika then leaves the game room in search of the nearest women's or gender-neutral bathroom she could get on that floor. However, she doesn't seem to feel much stress at all beyond simply being on the clock for letting it out. And drinking water.

It seems that Monika has a lot on her mind, on her way back to the VAs' game room against Kickapoo. So why is it that this tossup makes me feel nauseated enough to want to vomit in the middle of a quiz bowl game, and in my first HSNCT run, while I didn't get nauseated more than once in AP Bio?

"And that's the game. Venomous Agendas four hundred ten, Kickapoo one hundred sixty-five" the moderator announces the final score.

"Breathe deeply, Monika, and you should be able to keep your nausea under control. We want you to play your best here" Cindy tells her nausea-prone teammate.

"All right..." Flo watches Monika feel more comfortable going into their second game, which takes place elsewhere on the same floor.

Oleg then starts praying that Monika won't vomit again during the HSNCT. Especially since he feels like the VAs are going to need all four players to play their best to go as deep as they can. They go in and they win a much tighter round two game against Hallsville, but still win by a hundred points.

As the VAs keep winning games, their opponents get bigger, too. The VAs then proceed to win four games in a row.

"It's ok if we don't win all the time in the prelims, but we still need to win two of our six remaining games, and ideally three or four" Cindy then tells her teammates, especially Monika, for whom it's her first HSNCT run.

"It's easier said than done" Flo warns her players going into the fifth game.

"At least, when I'm healthy, I can play well" Monika quips. "I think it's feasible"

The VAs then proceed to finish the day 5-2, but at the end of the first seven games, Flo eats lunch with her, while Monika looks up what she can eat to prevent getting nauseated tomorrow, going into the final three prelim games.