The University’s Quiz Bowl team won first place at last weekend’s national tournament, beating Ivy League contenders such as Yale and Harvard.

The Quiz Bowl A Team placed first in the Academic Competition Federation’s event, held Saturday and Sunday at Columbia University in New York. Quiz Bowl is a year-round competition for college students that’s similar to “Jeopardy!” 

Team President Billy Busse, junior in Engineering, said in a previous interview that Quiz Bowl questions address a variety of different academic disciplines and are arranged in sequence from harder to easier clues. He added that they’re designed to reward the player with the most knowledge of the subject.

“Physically, it’s very hard to maintain focus for 12-13 continuous hours at the tournament,” Ike Jose, captain of the A Team said. “I demanded that everyone purchase Red Bull or their favorite energy drink of choice so that they were able to (maintain focus) when the Saturday tournament stretched into the deep reaches of the night.”

The A Team comprises four members, three of whom are undergraduates. The one graduate student in Engineering, Aaron Rosenberg, is the team’s “secret weapon.”

“Aaron was a very good player while at Brown (University), and adding him to our trio was enough for us to win a national championship,” said Jose, a senior in Engineering.

Rosenberg’s arrival wasn’t the only reason the A Team made it to the championship. Rosenberg said all four members put in a lot of time and work throughout the year to make it to this point.

“Going into the tournament, I thought our chances of victory were slim. But everyone on the team invested large amounts of time this year into studying,” Rosenberg said. “We tried to cover different subjects so that we would complement each others’ strengths and weaknesses. It paid off.” 

Rosenberg also said Illinois had four players, the maximum number of players allowed, while at last year’s tournament, it only had three.

Austin Listerud, sophomore in Engineering, said Rosenburg and Busse played a small number of games before joining the Illinois team. Listerud also said other members played at tournaments frequently before coming to Illinois.

“It really goes to show how one can be successful at this game with a few years of hard work,” Listerud said. “This is why we try to pull anyone we can to our team on Quad Day.”

Janelle can be reached at [email protected].