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Coming off of their championship win at the Georgia Association of Private & Parochial Schools (GAPPS) Quiz Bowl, the quiz bowl team from Lafayette Christian School is on their way to nationals this weekend in Atlanta.

On Friday, the team will represent their school in a national competition against over 300 teams. The team includes Lily Pena, Alyssa Parker, JT Clarke, Walker Hudson and Connor Hudson.

Quiz Bowl is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for teams, in which members use buzzers to answer questions about science, math, history, literature, mythology, geography, social sciences, current events, sports and pop culture.

The matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration. Participation in Quiz Bowl both reinforces lessons from the classroom and encourages players to pursue new intellectual interests.

This will be Lafayette Christian’s first time attending the High School National Championship Tournament, coach Amanda Simmons said.

“We were supposed to go in 2021 when all of us were in middle school, but then COVID happened, and we weren’t able to. It’s going to be our first time actually getting to go, and I am super excited,” Parker said

As the competition gets closer, the group of scholars said they are excited to see where nationals go.

“We’ve put in a lot of work, and we have a really good time together — we’re all excited that we have made it this far this year,” Pena said.

Simmons said in preparation for nationals, the team has been practicing daily.

“We practice maybe two or three times a week before school starts for half an hour. It’s not super rigorous, but we’ve just been maintaining that routine to stay sharp. Sometimes we have even watched Jeopardy!, just to get a wider base of knowledge,” Simmons said. “They’ve all taken a specific test to brush up on certain topics so that we have an expert for the different topics.”

For the scholars, the road to nationals has seen its ups and downs.

“It’s been a roller coaster. At our regionals, we did really well and won every game. Then state happened and that did not go well,” Pena said.

“Most of us have been doing this since seventh grade and we’ve been together for a long time. We’ve been to so many different competitions together and come very far,” Parker said. “In our first year in middle school, we were pretty good and came second in the state but it’s been a roller coaster since then and very enjoyable.”

As the team heads to nationals for the first time, the members hope to have an impactful experience.

“I don’t expect us to place first or anything because the field is so much wider and the competition is so much heavier. But I think that it’ll be a very good learning experience for us and it’ll be a lot of fun to experience this together for the first time,” Pena said.

Parker said she thinks the competition will be a nice way to round out the school year.

“I think it’s going to be great to see what other private schools are doing and learn from them. We’ve interacted with them academically, in athletics so it’ll be nice to branch out and meet other people from other schools,” Parker said. “We will also get a feel for how we need to prepare for next year, which will be the majority of our senior year, and see how we can better ourselves for this upcoming year.”