With great power comes great responsibility, as is the case with the Langley quiz bowl, or scholastic bowl, club’s two co-presidents, seniors Ian Hoffman and Margaret Mosby. The two have managed to run the club effectively with the quiz bowl club’s sponsors.
“My co-coach, Ms. Dorman, and I, we will provide transportation to tournaments,” the club sponsor, Christina Baker said. “We help coordinate the forms that go with when we do stuff outside of school. I host the meetings here [at Langley], but I think Ian and Maggie do a lot of work of help coordinating the students and then communicating to me what I need to do to help them run the club.”
Additionally, Hoffman and Mosby have other responsibilities. For one, they must find and join tournaments, manage the club’s finances, and get new players to join. Among their other responsibilities, the co-presidents have some parts of their position that they enjoy more than others.
“As co-president I think it’s really enjoyable to be able to help out the club and see new members that are very nervous to be there sort of become more comfortable with being in the club and being confident in their own skills to answer questions,” Hoffman said.
Mosby enjoys practices that have a specific topic, especially when the topics are ones that interest her. The practices also allow the quiz bowl players to socialize and get to know each other.
“My favorite part of running the club is practices because I think that’s when I get to talk to the most people on the team,” Mosby said.
At practices, which are held every Wednesday, both co-presidents announce any information. Afterwards, each participant in quiz bowl tries to answer trivia-style questions before others. During practice Hoffman usually reads out questions, while Mosby usually keeps track of score. Hoffman doesn’t answer the questions because he has the answers, and so Mosby does. At tournaments though, both Hoffman and Mosby have their favorite topics.
“My most favorite [topic] is art history, which is an interesting choice. I’m also a fan of math, theoretical math, or all kinds of math I suppose, as well as […] physics, so there’s that,” Hoffman said.
On the other hand, Mosby has notably different interests. However, having different interests can be beneficial at times because it causes a variety of knowledge.
“My favorite topics are religion and mythology, and then pop culture and fine arts, so I’m much more a fan of the humanities because the science and math questions are pretty hard. I’m a big fan of mythology and ancient history, so [those are] my favorite topics,” Mosby said.
Regardless of the questions asked, the co-presidents enjoy going to tournaments. So much so, that they have been playing quiz bowl for multiple years.
“I’ve been doing quiz bowl since 7th grade, but even before that…my family is very trivia oriented, so for example, every week, we go to trivia night at this restaurant.” Mosby said. “So I really enjoy doing quiz bowl and that’s why I do it. I don’t want to say I’m like super good or super bad or anything, but […] I really enjoy doing it, which is why I started it.”
Hoffman started participating because of his love for trivia, but didn’t begin in the same way that Mosby did.
“Unlike most people, I did not do quiz bowl in middle school,” Hoffman said. “It was my freshman year, I was looking at the club list, and I was looking at clubs to join because in my freshman year it was virtual, entirely, so it was very strange, and quiz bowl seemed very interesting to me because I just love trivia, so I decided to join it.”
Since Hoffman and Mosby are seniors, they will be going to college in the fall. Both have interest in joining the quiz bowl teams at their college. When they go, they will remember their best memories from quiz bowl at Langley.
“I would say my most notable quiz bowl experience is probably…being on It’s Academic. It’s a really cool experience to be able to be on a live trivia game show.” Hoffman said. “It’s funny because you’ll see things like Jeopardy! and all that and I guess you can imagine what it’s like to be on that, but I essentially was. And It’s Academic is actually older than Jeopardy!”
Maggie’s favorite experiences in quiz bowl were also on It’s Academic. However, Mosby preferred one year of the show that the quiz bowl team participated in.
“Last year, we made it to regional championships in It’s Academic, and we got to go into the studio to film episodes, which I thought was really cool,” Mosby said, “Because I’ve never on TV like that before, and to be at an actual recording studio and do that, it was really fun.”
Most importantly, the quiz bowl co-presidents are loved by many and work to create a good community for Langley quiz bowl club.
“I think they’re great. I just love them and they’re both very smart, I think they’re interesting people,” Banker said. “They have just a wide array of knowledge.”