The SIS Academic Quiz Team (AQT) has been preparing for its first tournament at Seoul Foreign School, SFS, which took place on Saturday, Sept. 16.
AQT is composed of a variety of high school students, all specializing in different fields of academic study from STEM, history, and literature, to pop culture and sports. SIS AQT has become much more popular in recent months, with a handful of new prospects with diverse academic strengths joining the team this year.
“We had one of the largest influxes of new additions this year, and I personally was very impressed by their quality,” Donghyung Kim (11), SIS A Team captain, said. “We had people with expertise in a great variety of fields, and this allowed for C and D teams with balanced skillsets in every field from science and history to even literature.”
Donghyung said that new expertise allowed the SIS teams “to go toe to toe with the best teams in the league, with SIS C team, made nearly entirely of new recruits to beat Yongsan International’s team A.”
This upcoming competition is an integral one for the SIS academic quiz team. Depending on the results of this tournament, SIS will either have a shot at winning or be relegated to a lower bracket, placing additional pressure on the quiz team to perform up to par.
Our AQT members have been practicing rigorously every Thursday after school in hopes of placing high in the upcoming tournament. A typical quiz team practice session involves a multitude of things:
“We usually get into two teams, then proceed to go through all 24 questions in the packet,” Chong Min (11), AQT literature specialist said. “Each team has a buzzer for each person and there is one assigned reader who poses the questions; 15 points for an early answer, 10 points for normal, and -5 points for a wrong answer.”
The SIS A Team ended up placing second overall, and the B Team placed third at the Seoul Foreign School Quiz Team Competition. Armed with an entirely revamped team composition for all A through D teams, our teams demonstrated promising future prospects and triumphs in the world of academic quizzing.
