By Khalida Sarwari
Going into the final question of the National History Bee and Bowl championship, Saratoga High School student Bruce Lou stared into the eyes of a familiar rival. With the score tied 270-270 against the reigning champs, the Liberal Arts and Science Academy team from Austin, Texas, Lou’s heart raced as he listened closely to the moderator read the clues. Seconds later, Lou buzzed in and quickly blurted out: “Jugurtha, king of Numidia.”
With that answer, Lou effectively broke the tie and he and his teammates were declared the winners of the Varsity History Bowl championship for the first time since the school began participating in the competition four years ago. What made the victory sweeter was beating the team that defeated them last year, when Lou was a junior.
“It was such a high-stakes situation,” Lou, 18, recalled. “LASA had just come up suddenly. They’d gotten the last three answers in a row. We had a sizable lead at the half so I was really worried that I wouldn’t get it, and I don’t know how I could have walked away happy if I knew I could have won but just choked.”
Fortunately for Lou and his teammates–Ethan Ngai, Nate Ney and Nitya Sampath–nothing of the sort happened. The team walked away with the first-place trophy and an all-expenses paid trip this summer to the International History Olympiad, a weeklong celebration of history at the College of William and Mary in Virginia for students from around the world.
The National History Bee and Bowl, academic competitions that test students’ knowledge in all fields, eras and locations in history, took place April 24-26 in Arlington, Va. Schools qualified for the competition based on how well they performed in regional competitions.
The national competition consisted of 10 preliminary matches followed by three playoff rounds, semifinals and finals. In each match, the students worked in teams to answer questions based on a series of easy to challenging clues. The categories were U.S. history and world history, with questions that referenced the history of science, literature, the arts, religion, mythology, philosophy, historical geography, recent history and the history of sports and entertainment. Similar to a quiz show, students had to be the first to buzz in to answer a question.
Accompanied by history teacher Matt Torrens, four teams from Saratoga competed in this year’s Bowl and Bee. Saratoga’s junior varsity team, composed of members June Kim, Tiffany Huang, Kevin Chow and George Wang, came in second in the History Bowl, losing to Maggie Walker School from Richmond, Va.
Lou, who served as team captain of the varsity team, also won two individual competitions: the U.S. History Bee–his second consecutive title–and the History Bee. His accomplishments earned him the the tournament’s MVP title.
“It feels great because for me it’s been three years, and I’ve been working for this for a very long time,” said Lou. “It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort do this.”
Lou said he’d been preparing for the past year, ramping up his studying as the competition drew closer. This entailed reading “a ton” of e-books and online encyclopedias and writing his own questions. He said he owes his, as well as his team’s, success to hard work and not relying solely on luck. The objective, said Lou, was to “get good enough that even if we had bad luck it wouldn’t influence our final result too much.”
While he’ll be studying computer science at UC-Berkeley next year, Lou said he intends to stay involved in local history bowls.
“I see it as something everyone should study; it’s the collective memory of humankind,” said Lou. “I think by studying history, we remember what happened in our past. By not studying it, we forget the past, and if we forget the past we’re basically going blindly into the future.”
For more information about the competition, visit historybowl.com.
