Middle School And the Answer Is...

The rst half of the Middle School Quiz Bowl tournament’s nal round had just ended, and it looked like the Greenhill A team had no chance of winning. But the team pulled out a victory against St. Mark’s School of Texas, prevailing in almost every toss-up on the way to a tournament win.

It’s been a dominating year for Greenhill’s Middle School Quiz Bowl team. Head Coach James Herman has led the program to multiple tournament wins while also seeing two of his teams qualify for the Middle School Quiz Bowl national tournament.

e victory over St. Mark’s at a tournament hosted by Cistercian Preparatory School was one recent measure of the Greenhill team’s success.

“I was really proud of how that team sort of like boosted each other up, built each other up and went on to nish really strong,” Herman said.

e Greenhill MS Quiz Bowl program actually grew during the COVID-19 pandemic because of online competitions. About 50 students eventually signed up for the program, Herman said.

Having a large number of students encourages lots of friendly competition, Herman said.

Now, with so many strong players, there has been a lot of shi ing within the top teams.

“Like our B, C and D, I think on any given day they could beat one another,” Herman said, “So that’s really exciting as a coach because you have all these players who are really good and really competitive.”

With the national championships coming up in May, this makes it hard for Herman to decide team lineups in competitions.

“ ere may be a player who’s on a team that quali es in the fall, but by the spring someone else has kind of stepped up to take that spot,” Herman said. “So, it’s kind of tough to say which kids speci cally are going to nationals.”

Akash Bose is a student on the Middle School A team that also features Arman Makhani, Tomal Khan and Smriti Siva. Bose says having many people in Quiz Bowl has another e ect.

“It also means that you always have a network of people to support you,” Bose said.