Week 158: Before Tournament Two
Using your team's own enthusiasm for a subject to expand their confidence and range
The tournament is four days away. A smaller tournament, seven teams, and only one school has already qualified for Nationals. So while it’s not likely to be a big challenge for the already qualified team, it’s big for our team. We’re not even the least experienced team there, since a team that hasn’t played in four years is back.
We’re right at the point with the team where if they can punch through on a question, and hit it they’re going to gain confidence and start rolling. What I wanted to do in the last practice before the tournament is set them up to succeed. I ended up writing a set of questions that I knew they’d have a good chance of converting because it played into a strength that they all have.
The conversations that I’ve had with the individual members of the teams has led me to conclude all three listen to music, watch similar programs, and have an interest in the music of recent musicals. Because of that I know that a question about those will both interest them and motivate them to do well on it.
If you find a subcategory like that: you can use it to cover that subcategory, or you can use it to move beyond that subcategory. To that end, I started writing questions for them for practice, which could be known from the contents of songs from those sources. Having written questions on a variety of subjects, with subtle hooks from the musicals, I then inserted them as the first five bonuses of a practice packet. Trash categories seem to be the easiest to apply this technique, but it can be done with any subcategory which has the ability to connect to many other fields.
Note that I’m not writing about the music, or the musicals. I’m taking that as the starting point, and moving out from there. And note that I’m keeping the answers simple and easily referenced. The goal is still to challenge them, but by giving them things that could come up, and which are adjacent to the subject they know, they feel confident in their knowledge, and increase the likelihood they’ll expand their knowledge beyond what they know.
When coaching, you can bend the practice questions to play to your team’s strengths. You don’t have to write your own questions, you can search a database for questions that refernce the original subcategory [insert the Ina Garten “store bought is fine” meme here.] Now while I REALLY don’t recommend specifically favoring one player over another, when your team needs a confidence boost, it can be valuable to play towards things that you think are likely to be known by your TEAM. You can only do this by listening to your players.
The questions I used with side notes about sourcing:
1. Part of the reason for this labor action was the increase in 1899 of the unit price of supplies from 50 cents per hundred to 60 cents.
A. Name this occupation which struck, causing circulation of the New York World to be cut by two-thirds.
answer: Newsboy or paper boy
B. The cost were believed by the newspapers to be passed on to consumers, and were balanced by the increase in circulation due to this 1898 international conflict with battlefields in The Philippines and Cuba.
answer: Spanish-American War
C. The publisher of the New York World during the Newsboys' Strike, his name is now attached to a series of prizes for excellence in journalism.
answer: Joseph Pulitzer
[Inspiration: Newsies, which was the musical for the district where I live. It also has been used for numerous dance routines I’ve sat through waiting to watch Catie perform her solo. While I don’t know too much about the music of this decade, Thanks to years of sitting in the audience, I can identify a ridiculous amount of songs that could appear on “Now That’s What I Call Empowerment Songs for Teenage Girls: Volume 15-40.”]
2. While she made efforts to study English and learn the card games her fiancee played, when first presented to him outside Rochester Castle in 1539, he replied "I like her not."
A. Name this woman, fourth wife of Henry VIII
answer: Anne of Cleves or Anna of Cleves
B. Key to securing the marriage was a portrait by this King's painter, a German whose main patron was Thomas Cromwell.
answer: Hans Holbein the Younger
C. One of the grants in the divorce settlement given to Anne of Cleves was the palace in and giving the name to this section of London. Its current prominence is based on it being the name of the football club featured in Ted Lasso.
answer: Richmond
[Inspiration: “Get Down” from Six, which one of Catie’s teammates uses for her solo, and which was playing in Pittsburgh the previous weekend. I later found out one of the team was at the Saturday matinee.]
3. In a musical presentation of this myth, the underworld is seen by its lord as offering protection from the harsh winter conditions, leading one figure to sign a contract to go there.
A. Name this figure who in more traditional myths dies and is held in the underworld by Hades.
answer: Eurydice
B. Eurydice's rescue is attempted by this mythological character, her husband who was given a lyre by Apollo and in Hadestown is the adopted son of Hermes.
answer: Orpheus
C. Orpheus music brings happiness to this wife of Hades, which leads to Hades allowing him to attempt to take Eurydice back to the land of the living.
answer: Persephone
[Inspiration: Hadestown, which seemed like a likely candidate and was easily adaptable.]
4. Hercules Mulligan, an Irish-born tailor, was recruited as a spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
A. Mulligan was a student at King's College, which is now this Ivy League institution in New York City.
answer: Columbia University
B. While at King's College, Mulligan met this future Secretary of the Treasury, and helped radicalize him to the cause of independence.
answer: Alexander Hamilton
C. In Hamilton!'s Act I depiction of this final battle of the Revolution, Lafayette explains to Hamilton Mulligan's role in spying on the British.
answer: Battle of Yorktown
[Inspiration: They’ve all seen Hamilton! at this point. For this sort of effort, the LCD Soundsystem Doctrine applies: Shut Up and Play the Hits.]
5. A 2012 remix of this song, which reached number 6 on the UK charts, was included in the closing ceremonies of the London Olympics.
A. Name this 1985 song which charted for a third time when included in Season 4 of Stranger Things.
answer: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)
B. This British artist sang, produced, and played all the instruments on "Running Up That Hill," and has earned over a million pounds in royalties on the song since 2022.
answer: Kate Bush
C. Bush's first #1 single in the UK was a 1978 retelling of this Emily Bronte Gothic romance from the perspective of Catherine Earnshaw.
answer: Wuthering Heights
[Inspiration: No not a musical, but I’ve had this idea to do this in my head since listening to the category round on this season’s episodes of Counterpoint about Kate Bush’s literary inspirations. I know they watch it, and I know they haven’t gone down a Kate Bush rabbit hole yet.]
After it, I gave them the spiel: "I'm guessing you feel like you did well on those last few bonus questions. Well, they were written on the subjects I know all of you have in common. You follow music from current musicals, and Stranger Things. And guess what: when you follow those sort of things and pay attention to them, you overhear and observe a little bit of information about the things that the musical or the songs were based on. You've picked up a little history of the American Revolution, a little British history, some mythology, some literature, some general knowledge about awards. All from being observant during listening to Six, Hamilton!, Stranger Things, Newsies and Hadestown. Things that you might not even know you know. If you are observant of the world around you, you'll make connections between things, and link them back to things you've seen before. Anything you observe, no matter how remotely connected, could come back to help you in quiz bowl. And when they get asked in quiz bowl, you'll see them, and be able to answer them.
So keep your eyes and ears open, because everything out there has the possibility of helping you in quiz bowl."
The basic method of this technique:
Figure out through practice, some subcategory which your entire team is knowledgeable.
Write or search for questions which have a reference to this subcategory but which run away from it into other categories.
Insert a run of 4-5 bonus questions into a packet. Read it as straight as possible.
After they’ve torn through those questions, point out that you’ve chosen those questions for a specific reason, to show them that a subject they know very well can help them in a lot of other areas.
You don’t need to mention the confidence boost they’re getting from this. If you want to say anything at all, mention that the questions that favor your knowledge won’t always come up in a block like that.
After this tournament, the team has no more tournaments scheduled for this year. But I will continue practice because next year will come with at least the events in the fall, and we still have a target of getting this team on the local TV show. To bridge the team between this year and next, I’m going to have to have a packet of things for viewing/reading/listening over the summer. I’ve got to start putting that all together now.