It doesn't play on a court or field, but one of Brown's most successful teams has been winning competitive regional tournaments and is heading to a national competition this spring.
Quiz Bowl, a relatively new group at Brown, competes in team "Jeopardy"-style trivia tournaments.
Brown's growing team qualified Feb. 10 for a national competition in Minneapolis by winning a tournament hosted by Harvard, where Brown defeated several other teams including Yale, Dartmouth and Boston universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The team has performed well at several other regional competitions this year, winning the Penn Bowl over winter break by defeating 16 teams from schools including the University of Chicago, Princeton University and Williams College. The team hosted two tournaments on campus last fall, each drawing a field of 10 to 12 teams.
When Jerry Vinokurov GS arrived on campus two years ago - having played quiz bowl as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and in high school - he found that while Brown had a team, it was inactive. Vinokurov organized other grad students and first-years who had played in high school to renew the team. They started practicing and attending competitions in 2005.
"It was quite different, because at Berkeley I had come into an established club, we had more funding - the structure was already there so we didn't have to do much to build it," Vinokorov said.
This year, the team has four grad students and about seven undergraduates, according to team members.
In quiz bowl competitions, a moderator asks questions on various topics, and participants signal using buzzers to answer each question. Tournaments generally begin with a round robin, followed by bracketing that pits the top four teams against each other.
"By virtue of having two grad students in physics and a sophomore who is going to concentrate in biology or chemistry, we're a pretty science-heavy team," said Dennis Jang '10. But, he added, all team members prepare to answer questions on a variety of subjects.
Both Evan Lazer '10 and Jang noted that Vinokorov's expertise and skill are great assets to the team. "Jerry is one of the best active players in the nation," Jang said.
Team members cite the excitement of competition and the chance to learn about a range of subjects as reasons for joining the team.
"I (wasn't) very interested in philosophy - I knew next to nothing - and then I heard all these questions on philosophical works, and I thought, 'Hey, that's really interesting,' and I went out and started reading it, and I think the same goes for a lot of literature that I've been exposed to. As a physics major, you don't get to read a lot of literature," Vinokorov said.
"I really like having an outlet for the information I pick up," said Sofia Pellon '10, who played quiz bowl in high school and now competes for Brown. "It's really stimulating," she said, and it's a "nice break from other academic and extracurricular activities."
"You get to know everybody because it's a small group," Lazer said.
"The feeling that you get on the team is a little like being backstage in a theater production in terms of the camaraderie and inside jokes that (develop)," Pellon said.
The team practices on Monday and Wednesday evenings in Barus and Holley. Currently, the team's main sources of funding are the $90 it receives from the Undergraduate Finance Board as a Category II club and the entrance fees collected at tournaments it hosts.
The tight budget can limit the team's activities. Jang said the team may not be able to send its underclassmen to the national tournament, which will be held on April 13 and 14 on the campus of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and is sponsored by National Academic Quiz Tournaments.
The team also plans to compete at another national competition at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., on March 31, which is sponsored by the Academic Competition Federation. The ACF competition does not have a qualifier as the NAQT tournament does, but the ACF competition is also difficult, members of the team said.
The team is hopeful about quiz bowl's future at Brown.
"Last year we had practices where three people showed up, and this year it's 10, so it would be great to get up to 20," Vinokorov said.
"Hopefully it will just grow and get better," Lazer said.
