After a year of success in the regular and early championship season, McLean quiz bowl finished off their season with a top-50 finish at the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) National Championships.

“Our goal is to always do the best we possibly can,” teacher sponsor Jeffrey Brocketti said. “It’s nice if we can improve from year to year, but we had a top 50 finish…and that’s all we can really ask [for].”

McLean quiz bowl has had a top-50 finish at Nationals for the past three years, meaning the Highlanders this year upheld the standard of previous teams.

“[The team] did a good job this year,” Brocketti said. “They were comparable with teams from the past, and we’ve had some really good teams in the past.”

The NAQT National Championships take the format of 10 preliminary rounds over two days, followed by double elimination playoffs. With a 7-3 record after preliminaries, the Highlanders made it to the playoffs, but suffered their second loss after their third playoff match. Despite this impressive performance, there is one disappointment shared by most of the team.

“We were eliminated one round earlier than last year. [That] final loss that prevented us from having the same or better finish than last year was a 10 point loss in games where you score hundreds of points.” Brocketti said. “It’s a razor thin margin; if one thing went differently, we [could have] won that match instead of losing it.”

Ultimately, the Highlanders put forth a strong performance at Nationals, wrapping up the season on a high note. With an impressive regular season, state championship title and top-50 finish at Nationals, it was certainly a season to be proud of, no matter how they felt they performed in that final playoff game.

“A lot of our games were very close, and in a situation like that it’s easy to focus on one thing that we could have done differently that would have led to a better result,” senior Clara Marks said. “However, we couldn’t have foreseen the circumstances we were put in, and we couldn’t have guessed what questions we were going to be asked. We just had to do our best and I think we did that, so I would not change anything [about our performance].”