On Monday morning, the news of VA winning quiz bowl-State for a second year in a row already reached the student body. Todd being among the first to congratulate her:

  “Congrats, Olivia! And here’s to hoping that you guys are going to win the HSNCT!” Todd exclaims in front of her, about to blush.

  “Thank you”

  Now I know Olivia is for real as a quiz bowler. But, while VA has been a quiz bowl powerhouse as far as I can remember, winning the HSNCT, and hence a national title, has eluded VA, Todd muses about the whole HSNCT situation VA is now in, and then prays for Olivia’s success two months from now.

  Other students who hitherto either kept quiet or secretly resented her, start mellowing to her. Like Lexie’s boyfriend, who approaches her with Lexie not far behind:

  “Now that’s what I call a meteoric rise!” Lexie’s boyfriend comments.

  “Two months ago, you were a cheerleader like any other. Today, you’re HSNCT-bound!” another student comments on how she burst onto the state’s quiz bowl circuit. And, of course, she’s now much higher-profile here.

  Now I can fully embrace my intellect. Now they understand that cheerleaders really do come in at all intellectual levels, Olivia starts thinking about how the past two months changed her outlook as a person. Ned, on the other hand, comes to her a bit before the bell:

  “You’re the smartest cheerleader in the world...” Ned whispers in her ear.

  “Yes, I scored when it counted most. Yes, you know about my smarts. But some cheerleader, somewhere, might be smarter than even I!” Olivia retorts.

  “That doesn’t sound like you! Rest assured that I won’t question your intelligence ever again!”

  “That’s so sweet, Ned!”

  “I didn’t expect an emergency backup to play that well at State!”

  “Oh, next year I’m going to be a starter on the quiz bowl team! Wait, I already am!”

  When the first bell rings, as usual on Mondays after a quiz bowl (or debate) tournament, Norman makes a player deliver the morning announcement. Olivia is invited to do so and enters the principal’s office.

  “Good morning. The quiz bowl team successfully defended both its middle school and large high school state titles at the quiz bowl state championship, held on Saturday!” Olivia delivers the announcement.

  “Also, Olivia Palmer, a freshman, won the Tessier Prize, awarded to the female high school quiz bowl revelation of the year!” Norman follows up after announcing Olivia’s award.

  The only reason why Olivia won the Tessier Prize and not the Tremblay Prize is because she was an emergency backup, and didn’t hear enough tossups to be eligible for the female rookie of the year award, Norman muses as Olivia leaves his office for her first course.

  “Also, now that we know cheerleaders can actually amount to something in the academic arena, please treat them as students like any other. This goes for the teachers, too! Venomous! Agendas!” Norman keeps talking in the PA system.

  Oh boy. I knew all along that cheerleaders are students like any other, but until now, the town chose to believe that cheerleaders were dumb, but still nice enough to be able to use their athleticism to get boys left and right. And even that pales in comparison to what our opponents’ cheerleaders endure, Lexie muses in her classroom upon hearing about how cheerleaders should be treated as students like any other going forward. To our opponents’ eyes, cheerleaders often seem to be dumb and mean boy-chasers, and whose only redeeming quality is their beauty. And what popularity they might have depends upon who they date.

  But, at lunch time, Olivia doesn’t suspect that several freshmen are about to ask for various things from her:

  “Could you please help me in English?” a first person asks her.

  “What about you help me in science? I’ll even invite you to a baseball game if you do!” Lothario, the VAs’ setup reliever, asks her.

  “I’m afraid that I already promised Ned to watch a baseball game because he went to watch me play at quiz bowl-State!” she rebuffs Ned’s teammate. “If you all want my help for coursework, we need to do so all at once! So I invite you to come to quiz bowl practice after school!”

  From here on out, I must be cautious not to let others at school take advantage of my rise in status. I’m a quiz bowl starter now, will all that implies for my social situation. If everything I heard about our opponents is correct, VA’s social atmosphere is like night and day, Olivia muses as she waits in line for lunch.

  It's clear to her now that people seem more drawn to her now than she ever did as a mere cheerleader. And she clearly doesn’t draw from the same social circles as she used to since she never interacted much with a lot of them.

  When Olivia gets seated with Ned on one side, and others on the other, Ned asks questions about the whole experience of playing quiz bowl.

  “You never told me about how you feel playing quiz bowl!” Ned asks her.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “The intensity comes from the mental speed requirements of the game, and also memory. There are times when I feel on edge in games. Sure I get on edge in cheer, too, but it’s just not the same. I’m sure that you, during at-bats in baseball, or when the quarterback passes to you, you feel on edge”

  “I get it, there’s watching the event from the sidelines and there’s being in it. But does it feel good to you to play it?”

  “Yes and no. You were there when I scored the title game’s winning tossup, sometimes I feel like my brain could catch fire”

  “Sometimes, the game feels like a mile wide and an inch deep!” the person next to her comments about the game. “That you guys know mountains of stuff but can’t make sense of much of it”

  “I confess that the fastest studying methods for quiz bowl yield knowledge bases that are, as you said, a mile wide and an inch deep!” Olivia answers her neighbor.

  Joaquin arrives behind her. “Doing well in class also helps, but has obvious limits!”

  “Our window to win is closing at the end of the season because both Joaquin and I are going to college!” Cindy points out to Olivia. “But our decision will be made on Ivy Day”

  “Speaking of Ivy Day, you have until then to decide which away game to watch for me” Ned reminds Olivia of her promise to him.

  Most college-bound students will have decided by then where they will attend. So it’s really a celebration of an elite few, Cindy sighs before going to eat.

  When quiz bowl practice comes, so many want to stay after school to see their darlings that the usual room is overcrowded. Including softball and baseball players, neither of whom can stay for long.

  “What’s the deal with quiz bowl? Why, this year, does the practice immediately after State have so many more people than in years past?” Flo is left wondering about why so many suddenly want to go to quiz bowl practices. “We need to fan out to different rooms! I assure you that, if you ref quiz bowl games, even in practices, it will make you better players!”

  “How would reffing a quiz bowl game make me a better player?” Olivia asks the coach.

  “If you ref a quiz bowl game, you’ll get a better feel for what questions could be too hard for whom, and also have a better idea of when to buzz in” Flo then turns to the rest of the players. “Honestly, some of the Red Army high school sets already encroach into collegiate territory, so you may use Red Army packets to run practice games with the newcomers!”

  “Red... Army?” Becky scratches her head, while right next to Olivia.

  “It’s a Russian question vendor, and makes dozens of sets per year, middle and high school”

  There are so many newcomers that there just aren’t enough buzzers for everyone. And the baseball and softball players left the room for their practices.

  “Gotta go!” Ned kisses Olivia and then leaves for his baseball practice.

  “Also, please make sure that you fan out and don’t all play with the same people, maximum four people per team!” Flo asks the attendees.

  Speaking of attendees, Flo has the attendees sorted into 16 groups as equally sized as possible, since she has the middle school team members also serve as moderators for today’s practice, so that everyone gets the same out of the practice.

  And then, for her practice round, Olivia has, on one hand, Becky, Lexie and Adriana, while, on the other, she has Todd and two more people who attend the practice specifically to close in on her. Olivia reads a first practice question from an old packet. Little did they know was that question actually came from Imélie’s final run at the HSNCT.

  The first two clues make everyone roll their eyes. As she reads the last two clues, she braces herself for the worse:

  “The Kinburn Peninsula lies just outside the city, which, for ten points, was the only oblast capital captured by the Russian army during the 2022 war in Ukraine” Olivia reads the tossup.

  And all six scramble, for three seconds, to find an answer to this tossup. Near the end of this very short period, Todd raises his hand to answer it.

  “Kherson!” Todd exclaims.

  “Ten. For ten points each…”

  Kherson? Is that the kind of obscure stuff Olivia works with in quiz bowl? Adriana seems to question why she felt it was a good idea to spend the time her new boyfriend is away at baseball practice at a quiz bowl one. It’s way harder than any game show I ever watched!

  And Adriana is hardly alone among the quiz bowlers’ friends and other groupies they brought in tow for the practice in realizing that there’s a big difference between following a quiz bowl team, as one would a sports team, and playing it. It’s also clear that their knowledge bases outside of coursework are much more erratic as the questions go on.

  It’s one thing to watch game shows from a distance, and another to be playing quiz bowl as if it was one, and you’re in the hot seat, Todd, as a Future Farmer of America, now realize just how nerve-wracking life on the quiz bowl team is compared to FFA. Where he finds tasting milk oddly relaxing. Even though the competitions themselves are held using Scantrons.

  Here, it seems like her friends eat many more neg fives than even she did herself at State. By the end of the practice, Olivia tells the people around her the following, as well as post about it on social media:

  “Now you have a better idea of what made townsfolk admire quiz bowlers for so long: quiz bowlers do what they themselves can’t!”

  “The same holds true of mathletics, too!” Cindy adds within earshot of Olivia.

  “Back in my playing days, quiz bowl was an opportunity that older generations never got, and the same with mathletics. But I was a rental player in the first season of the VAs’ quiz bowling dynasty we know today!” Flo adds her own comments about VA’s quiz bowling history.

  I really hope that, even though they may not play quiz bowl ever again, they’ll respect the game for what it is. And what playing the game really requires of a student, Olivia muses while Todd approaches Becky and her.

  “The social studies presentation schedule for group projects is now open. I suggest that we go in the first session, on April the second, so we don’t have that hanging over our heads!” Todd requests his teammates in that course.

  “Oh sure...” Becky sighs, her head spinning from playing quiz bowl in a practice.

  Olivia texts Ned about the proposal to make their presentation in the first session, but not necessarily go first. While an answer isn’t forthcoming just yet...

  “I think we need to wait on Ned before committing to a time slot; it might work for us, but maybe not for him!” Olivia warns her two teammates present. “VA is knee-deep in the race to the playoffs in baseball!”

  “That’s true!” Becky exclaims while Olivia checks on VA’s current baseball standings.

  “And we’re up against Lothario’s team to go first in the first session!” Todd points out.

  “The social studies teacher didn’t favor any baseball player over the other because of their baseball positions, so we might have a chance to go first!” Olivia remarks.

  And then Ned texts Olivia as soon as he’s done with his baseball practice. My social studies teammates want us to present early? And Lothario also has his sights set on the first presentation slot? He’s our setup pitcher, the faster, the better to get it!

  Ned: I’m good with going in on the first day for the social studies’ group project

  And, with everyone’s approval, Todd emails the teacher to have their team go first, and then remove a roadblock from everyone. The answer comes rapidly:

  “Woohoo! We’re going to present first!” Todd exclaims upon confirmation of their presentation slot.