Hello! I just won first place in an individual competition about history. As someone who’s been playing this game for a while, it feels great to finally be on top.
Ridgewood hosted the North Jersey Regional competition for History Bee and Bowl, two competitions centered primarily around, if you could guess, history. I went with a group of friends, two of which were new to the competition, and we finished the preliminary rounds of bowl with three wins and two losses, putting us 3rd in the varsity division. I try to go into these tournaments with zero expectations for myself and my teammates as to avoid feeling disappointed by a bad performance, but this result was kind of in the middle ground. It wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t as good as I knew we could have done either – two close losses in a row to end the preliminary rounds will do that to you. I still felt like I hadn’t played my best, but I could save that anger for the playoffs and redirect it into properly playing to win.
Then comes the history bee, which is three rounds of individual competition. I did pretty good in the first two rounds, getting 9 points each, but in the third round, I got 11 points, which is extremely good. I think I got lucky with the questions being asked. But, the sum total of 29 put me tied-first in the varsity division, so therefore I won a spot in the finals. Having missed out on it by a single point last year, taking the top spot now felt awesome.
Following a lunch break of some good poke, history bee finals took place. Me and seven others competing to see who could get the most correct buzzes after 30 questions. At the end of those 30, there were 3 people tied in third place with 3 points, one person with four points, and me with 7.
Hello??????????? Why?????? How????????
It was definitely a surprise that I ended up winning, as I was sure that even though I was good, I had gotten lucky. I was nervous, especially given that everyone else had been playing history bowl for longer than I have, and I had gotten second or third in my first two games respectively against some of them. But to triumph by such a significant margin, and doing it sitting next to one of my friends, was honestly a euphoric experience. It felt like all my work had been validated.
Oh, and also we ended up winning the Bowl too. WHAT?
After ending up in the 3rd seed, we beat the 6th seed in the quarterfinals, and avenged our loss to the 2nd seed in the semifinals! Facing us in the finals was the 5th seed, who beat the 1st seed team in the semis – the other team we lost to. So here we were, two teams who just pulled off two upsets, sitting in the finals. It was a fun game because we were such good friends, but at the end of it we took home the gold. Double wins for me, and the JV division was also won by the Livingston team! This tournament truly felt like a reward for my studying, demonstrating what I could achieve if I put my mind to it.
Lovely turn of events, I tell you. Go look at the stats and see how ridiculous this was. Looking forward to repeating last year’s victory at the state championships this year.