Clemson quiz bowl team takes second place at national championship

Published: April 27, 2010

CLEMSON — Clemson University’s Academic Quiz Bowl Team took second place at the National Academic Quiz Bowl Team Intercollegiate Championship Tournament.

Sixty-four teams participated in the tournament representing such schools as Stanford, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, the University of Michigan and Rice University. Teams from Canada and the United Kingdom also competed. Clemson lost to Brown University in the final match.

The Clemson team is comprised of four Spartanburg residents: ­ George Stevens, a sophomore history major; Nick Clusserath, a sophomore economics major; Freddy Deangelis, a freshman general engineering major, and Kevin Lybrand, a freshman general engineering major. All of them attended Dorman High School, where they participated on Dorman’s quiz bowl team.

Stevens said he and Clusserath started the team because they enjoyed it in high school.

“We wanted to found the team because we enjoy showing our intellectual prowess by competing in academic competitions across the Southeast and nation,” said Stevens. “I also like that it allows me to meet people from all over the country and to travel all over the country.”

A quiz bowl match consists of 24 tossup questions and 24 bonus questions. Questions come from three main categories: history, literature and science. The intercollegiate championship was split into two divisions: Division I, open to anyone attending a university, including graduate students and Ph.D. candidates; and Division II, open only to undergraduate students. Clemson’s team competed in Division II.

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