By Jeff Burns
My
quiz bowl team was pretty good this year, and I was fortunate to have several
strong history students on it, most of them seniors. At a Georgia qualifier for
the National History Bee and Bowl, we did very well, winning the varsity team
bowl championship, and all four players qualified individually to compete in
the National History Bee. The National
History Bowl and Bee competitions are held in Washington DC on the last weekend
of April. Long story short, things fell
together financially so that we could afford the trip, and we decided to
compete in the Nationals for the first time.
The
Bowl competition, in which teams of 4 compete to answer questions covering all
areas of history, in other words anything and everything, takes place on
Saturday. The Bee, in which individuals
answer questions, takes place on Sunday. We flew from Atlanta to Washington
Thursday morning and planned to spend Thursday afternoon and Friday for
sightseeing.
First
stop after checking into the hotel was the National Museum of African-American
History, which none of us had seen.
Unable to secure tickets in advance, I had to rely on the daily tickets
released at 6:30 AM (and usually snatched up by 6:35). Success! The Museum is
phenomenal…I think. Unfortunately, the
museum was so uncomfortably crowded that it made seeing anything impossible. I
have never felt so claustrophobic in my life.
It might be a few years before I attempt another visit.
That
evening, we took a small group bus tour of the city and the monuments. This was a lot of fun. One word of caution
though: In April and May, Washington is
besieged by thousands and thousands of students, mostly 8th graders,
on school trips.
We
spent Friday on a whirlwind tour of the other Smithsonians: Air and Space,
Natural History, and American History.
Exhausting but awesome.
Then,
competition days. I was proud of my
guys’ performances in both the Bowl and the Bee. They performed very respectably for our first
Nationals foray, just missing playoffs. We
had time Sunday afternoon before our flight home, so we went to the National
Gallery for a last rush of culture and history.
All
in all, it was a great weekend. We were
all exhausted, but I think we all had a lot of fun too. It was a great sendoff for the three seniors,
and the sophomore on the team was excited and making plans for next year.
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