Players on Dunbar’s Academic Team won in virtually all areas of competition at their Regional Governor’s Cup competition on Feb. 15.

The Governor’s Cup competition is a statewide quiz bowl tournament amongst high schools and middle schools. There are three major components to the competition: quick recall, tests and future problem solving competitions. Quick recall involves teams from each school, usually consisting of four players, answering questions. Two rounds of ten questions are completed. If a team answers correctly, they have the chance to answer three bonus points. Each question, whether ‘toss-up’ (not bonus) or bonus, earns the team ten points.

Individual test-takers answer 50-question tests in a given subject area. Future problem solvers collaborate in a team environment to give a solution to a given prompt. After all competitions, points are added together to form an overall score.

The format of the Governor’s Cup competition is somewhat different from other quiz bowl tournaments, mainly in that players in quick recall can be penalized for hesitating, or failing to give the answer to a question within three seconds. Dunbar senior Athena Kern noted this when talking to the Lamplighter about her team’s performance.

“It’s hard to switch over to Governor’s Cup questions because we only do that type a few weeks a year,” Kern said. “But we performed well enough.”

Indeed, Dunbar did extremely well. In addition to being the overall winner, several of Dunbar’s players placed highly in the individual testing events. Seniors Valerie Sarge, Chloe Cao, Christian Wright, and Athena Kern all won 1st in Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts and Arts & Humanities, respectively. Dunbar’s Future Problem Solvers team also won their competition, beating Tates Creek.

Next, Dunbar must compete at the state level, a competition it has a reputation of winning.

“We’ve won state the last two years, and I really don’t want to break that streak right before I graduate,” Kern said. “[State] is a little bit scary. I think that everyone taking tests and playing quick recall needs to study a lot, and it’s coming up so quickly.”

As the team prepares, it has even more in its future. Several academic team tournament organizations, including NAQT, or National Academic Qualifying Tournaments, and PACE, or Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence, host national tournaments that teams qualify for by competing in games around the country. Dunbar has qualified for such national competitions, and it seems the team is looking forward to them.

“We’re really excited about our national competitions,” Kern said. “I feel like those are more high-stakes.”

With much in its future in the coming weeks, the Dunbar Academic Team is in a good position as they enter their final competitions of the year. The State Governor’s Cup will be held from March 15 to March 17 at the Galt House in Louisville.