Which is better, to be a strong individual quizzer or to be on a strong team?
–Me, Here
Let’s just put it this way: one quizzer alone will NEVER win you any tournaments. And if you’re going to a competition to win, it is mandatory that you are given enough support. Last year at the NYC, at the FQA Finals, at the Blue Ridge Invitational, I was ranked in the highest 5 or so at each tournament, but I never made it past 4th place. Why? Because even though I was a decent quizzer, my team was weak. I had one or two other quizzers on my team that I could count on to get some questions, but to win a tournament, you need 3 or 4 top notch quizzers. That’s why, in part, I was so excited about quizzing at SCQANIT 2004: because for the first time in about a year, I had a team who I could depend on.
On the flip side, some people quiz to be the best. They memorize all the chapters and dominate. There’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is when a quizzer like that winds up getting eliminated early, because they have no back-up. Often times some of the highest quizzers at a tournament are up there because their team wasn’t quizzing very well, and so that individual had no support, OR competition. Other quizzers may be good individually, but on a good team, their stats don’t represent that, because they had several other people on their team attempting to answer with them.
In 2003, The Master’s Academy sent to AACS was, in my opinion, one of the best teams there. I loved quizzing on that team because first, were all my friends, and second, they gave me plenty of support. For me, I didn’t really care if I was the top quizzer, as long as our team did well. An ideal team for me is a team where 4 of the 5 quizzers make the top 15, and none of them really have to be in the top 5.
Did you enjoy quizzing? and what aspect of quizzing made it fun?
Someone, Somewhere
I did (and still do) enjoy quizzing. Honestly, I could talk for hours and hours of quizzing memories, strategies, close-calls, and lucky breaks. It is really one of the few things that I am passionate about, and I hope that as I grow older, I will be able to coach multiple teams, and hopefully win several tournaments.
I don’t think there is one specific aspect of quizzing that made it fun. I love meeting new people through quizzing; I must have made several great friends through quizzing, over two dozen acquaintances, and like I said before, my girlfriend. I really enjoy traveling around to different places and watching quizzing from other states. But what puts it over the edge for me as far as my joy of quizzing is the strategy. I have had long conversations about why TMA won this tournament, or why TMA lost this tournament, which quiz and which answer was the deciding factor, what would have happened if we had this quizzer with us, and how can we improve next time.
Unfortunately, Bible Quizzing is not for everybody. With my team at Master’s, as well as my team at Neighborhood Alliance, we have had quizzers leave because they found out that it was not for them. However, for me and for a lot of others (including most of those on this website), Bible Quizzing was a calling. My only regret concerning quizzing is that I should’ve joined earlier; everybody said I should join, and it took me a long while for me to see that. If there is one thing that excites me the most about Bible Quizzing, it’s seeing quizzers like those at my church team who are young but still love quizzing, and will have several quizzing years left in them.
Jesse