The Bromfield School was one of 16 teams competing for this season’s state championship title on GBH’s “High School Quiz Show,” an on-air academic tournament. Despite Bromfield’s best efforts in the episode that aired Saturday, March 5, the quiz team fell short of winning against Sharon High School by just 40 points, with a final score of 850 points.
“Overall it was really fun. I’ve never done something like this before that was so fast-paced,” said senior Olivia Ren, who is the team captain. “But there are some things you just can’t prepare for—that you never expect to see on the show.”
Representing Bromfield were Ren’s teammates Julian Iverson, Sawyer Madison, and Ewan Ward, with alternates Lana Ostaszewski and Diesel Whitten. The team is coached by Bromfield faculty member Kathleen Doherty.
The show was taped in January from the GBH television studio, with the teams of four participating remotely. Ren said the team used an online platform provided by GBH to answer questions during the competition. “The questions would appear on this system, so we had to have Zoom open in one window and the platform opened on another,” she said.
The competition was divided into four rounds: toss-up, head-to-head, category, and lightning. In the toss-up round, all four teammates could buzz in for a correct answer and earn 10 points each, or earn 40 points if everyone answered correctly. As Billy Costa, the show’s host, quickly posed questions spanning a variety of topics, the Bromfield quartet earned the full 40 points on a number of questions, with answers like—Dred Scott, Wyoming, nitrogen, Meiji, reflex, and the transcontinental railroad. But Sharon earned full points on more questions and took the lead in the first round by 100 points.
“There was one question where the answer was ‘hecto,’” said Ren, referring to a question asking which metric prefix denotes a factor of 100. “We learned that in middle school and it’s something I should have known, but I was overthinking it.”
Sharon maintained the lead in the head-to-head round, where incorrect answers resulted in a 10-point deduction. Ren and Iverson said the category round was their favorite because the team was allotted 10 seconds to discuss answers. “After the category round, we had a leg up on the competition,” Iverson said. Bromfield trailed Sharon by only 20 points after successfully answering questions about math and money.
In the final lightning round, the teams answered 10 rapid-fire questions. Madison earned 10 points for his team after answering that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer with 38,387 points. The team was stumped by the question asking for the name of the Polynesian harpooner in “Moby Dick” —Queequeg. Sharon finished with 890 points, defeating Bromfield.
“There was a question about ‘The Princess Bride’ and the answer was Robin Wright,” said Iverson. None of the eight contestants knew the answer. “I feel like I should have gotten that right.”
Although Iverson said he would have preferred competing live on the quiz show, he really enjoyed the experience. “I was not as nervous at the competition as I thought I would be,” he said, adding that since he participates in theater, he is well accustomed to audiences. “I think going on this show you realize you know a lot more than you thought you did.”
Now, the quiz team is resting and preparing for their upcoming school trivia night fundraiser. To watch the full episode featuring Bromfield, use the YouTube link www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB7GWGhPiEw.
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