You may have heard about Quiz Bowl. It’s basically a trivia club at MHS. Leading the MHS Quiz Bowl team is Dr. Sara Campbell, a chemistry teacher at the school. She explained it this way: "Quiz Bowl is a trivia-based competition where students answer questions based on a variety of subjects." It is set up similar to the game show Jeopardy!

A couple of weeks ago, some students on Quiz Bowl signed up for the Granite State Challenge, a statewide competition involving a select group of 16 teams from across New Hampshire. To qualify for this competition, MHS Quiz Bowlers took two tests. One was administered on school grounds. The other test was taken at an event called Super Sunday, on the campus of Manchester Community College. This occurred on Nov. 15, and the six individuals who took and passed the test at MHS attended the event. These talented students include seniors Jack Landry and Bailey Joseph; juniors Lauren Hatfield, Pooja Agrawal and Zev Sernik; and freshman Nicholas Pittman (myself).

About 50 different teams signed up for Super Sunday, but only 16 teams will qualify for televised competitions scheduled for early 2016. When asked about the importance and nature of Super Sunday, host Jim Jeannotte said Super Sunday "kicks off our season, when students from all over New Hampshire begin to dream of defeating other talented teams for the right to appear on television." Jeannotte has hosted the Granite State Challenge for 30 years.

Each team that qualifies for official quizzing rounds filmed on the set of New Hampshire Public Television will face opposing teams in a methodical way: The team that scores the highest on the Super Sunday test will take on the team that scored the lowest. Similarly, the team that scored the second highest will compete against the team that scored the second lowest, and so on. This tournament lasts until a team has won four games and the championship game, when they are declared the Granite State Challenge champions of the season.

The team from MHS passed the second test and was set to receive the news of whether they qualified for Granite State Challenge on Nov. 17.

Nicholas Pittman is a freshman at Merrimack High School.