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Photo By Dan Smith
The Knights’ Scholastic Bowl team won its third straight state title this past spring and is gearing up for a “quadrapeat” next year.
Cave Spring High School in Roanoke County has become so dominant in Scholastic Bowl competition that it is having to invent a new word to describe its success. Next year, the Knights will follow their “threepeat” with a shot at a “quadrapeat,” a fourth straight title. This year’s third consecutive Class 3 state championship was accomplished without a senior on the 12-player squad.
Four in a row would be a singular achievement in the classification, but with the entire team—including the five reserves—coming back, it is a reasonable anticipation. Cave Spring and Western Albemarle each won three straight in the past six years.
This year’s champs were led by captain and all-state player Billy Luqiu, a 16-year-old junior, who attends Roanoke’s elite Governor’s School for Science and Technology for half a day. The other captain is Lexie Agee, a 17-year-old junior. The remainder of the starting team is Miles Vance, 16, sophomore; Travis Schuck, 16, junior; Katie Ball, 16, junior; Maya Sowh, 15, sophomore; and Bennett Snyder, 14, freshman.
The coaches are math teachers at CSHS (leading to jokes every time a math question is missed): Bob Powers, who has been with the program for a number of years, and Tamara Carson.
The questions in the eight-team, double elimination tournament, says Lexie Agee, “can be as challenging or as easy” as the team chooses and range widely by topic. Preparation: “Read Wikipedia, watch a lot of TV,” laughs Billy Luqiu.
The format is described by the VHSL thusly: “Matches consist of a round of 15 tossups, 10 directed questions for each team which bounce back and a concluding phase of 15 more tossups. Tossups are scored in the normal quiz bowl way. Directed questions are worth 10 points each and function similarly to a single-part bonus, but their reading is not correlated to answering tossups.” Got that?
For those who don’t know about Scholastic Bowl, it was organized in 1998 by the Virginia High School League and is the league’s newest and most popular activity. The Knight team members prefer to call it a “sport,” though their coaches quickly correct them. Most of the students on the team are involved in other activities, ranging from track to band, debate and chess.
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