Binghamton University’s Quiz Bowl team went to Rosemont, Illinois last month for the Intercollegiate Championship Tournament, one of the largest trivia competitions in the country.

Hosted by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments, which holds competitions at the middle school, high school and college level, 64 teams from the United States and Canada went head-to-head and showed their trivia knowledge. Led by founders Deric Wagner ‘24, Quiz Bowl’s vice president and a first-year master’s student studying business administration, and Bianca Van Zile, a senior majoring in accounting and the organization’s president, the team competed in the tournament’s second division against teams from Harvard, Brown and Columbia Universities.

“It was hard,” said Wagner. “There are some really smart kids there. We played Amherst, Cornell, Chicago [and] McGill in Canada. We played them and we were toward the bottom of the field. But just in general, to be able to go there and rep Binghamton for the first time after starting this three years ago, it was pretty special.”

In February, the University’s team hosted the Sectional Championship Tournament, where 18 teams competed for seats at the Intercollegiate Championship. The tournament was the largest Quiz Bowl competition in Upstate New York, according to Wagner.

Wagner said that by hosting, the team automatically got a seat in Division II, where teams new to the tournament competed. The team tied for 30th place.

The Quiz Bowl team was founded in 2022 after Wagner, who had been competing since seventh grade, learned that there was no team at BU, which was “the largest university in New York state that did not have a quiz bowl team.” While searching for people interested in creating the team, Van Zile reached out to him after finding him on the National Academic Quiz Tournaments’ “rising freshman” list.

“Unlike Deric, I didn’t play quiz bowl in high school, which I regretted, which is why I wanted to start a club here,” said Van Zile. “My high school was actually very competitive in quiz bowl.”

“And so over winter break, I was watching some clips of my classmates that had competed, and I was like, ‘Hey, I actually know some of this stuff,’” she continued. “I kind of regret not trying out. So that’s when I found him on the rising freshman list and sent him a DM.”

Before they were chartered by the Student Association, the Quiz Bowl team was already competing in collegiate tournaments. At its first competition, the Academic Competition Federation’s fall tournament, the team placed second.

“We show up there, and it’s our first time playing a college quiz bowl tournament,” Wagner said. “And we just start winning — we barely knew each other and we didn’t know what we were good at.”

The team has competed in eight tournaments this year. In the fall, three Binghamton teams competed in the federation’s tournament at Cornell University. The University’s A team placed fourth out of 18 teams.

At quiz bowl tournaments, two teams of four compete against each other, answering questions about several different topics. Each question contains multiple sentences of information, with a “giveaway” at the end. Points are awarded based on how quickly teams buzz in and get the answer correct, with a deduction if they answer incorrectly.

While Wagner and Van Zile are both graduating this semester, they said they believe the club will continue to grow in the coming years.

“This club is here to stay,” Wagner said. “It will last for years. Cornell’s had a team for three decades. Just like how I mentioned how many high school players we have that come to Binghamton, and the growth we’ve already achieved, this club will be here to stay.”