We’re going to talk about Quizzing again, but this time it’s all fun and no Games.
(see what I did there?)
I’m going to share two of my favorite Quizzing memories, both from Platinum Round in Washington, D.C. during Summit 2016.
Up first, a story of catastrophe. There were ten teams there, scattered around the stage. The Journey book that year was Romans-let me tell you, we totally had to revamp our Speed question strategies, because nearly every—single—verse was from Romans, so we could not buzz in simply from hearing the book and use process of elimination.
Or, so we all thought.
Here’s the scene: It’s the middle of Platinum Round. Honestly, the win could go any direction at this point. We’re all huddled in our half-circles, knees touching, sweating thanks to both the lights and the stress. My team had four people on it: two girls in their senior year, receiving their Citations almost immediately afterwards, me in my junior year, brand new to this group, and our final member was a freshman boy (no pressure there!).
“Question!”
Our heads shot downwards, all our hands, clammy as they were, squished onto this buzzer the size of a Crayola crayon, trying not to shake so we didn’t accidentally buzz in.
“Please recite Romans-”
“BEEP!”
An audible gasp rose from the room, and a buzz of chatter swept the teams onstage. There was some giggling going around, because this was closer to the beginning of the round than the end and there had barely been any Romans verse questions yet, leaving most of the book itself-along with the Gospel Wheel, Faith Foundations, and Book Summaries-as fair game. There was absolutely no way they could guess the right verse-because it would have to be a guess, they had no clue which passage it could possibly be.
A girl from the team stood up and walked to the microphone, and recited a verse word perfect. I can’t remember which verse it was, but I know she had it word for word.
There was a pause.
Then. . .
“That is correct.”
The head judge sounded dumbfounded, and if there was ever a disturbance at a Quizzing event that could be equaled to a riot, this was it. The room exploded with cheers, shouts, and claps-all teams were ecstatic for them. The girl looked like she could collapse, her team was losing their minds.
Honestly, I don’t think there was any team more happy than the one who had buzzed in second reflexively and now didn’t have to answer.
This moment was completely insane, and if you were on that team or from that church, just know you have my eternal respect for correctly answering a seemingly unanswerable question.
Finally, and by far my favorite story for absolutely no reason in particular, the moment my team won Bible Quizzing. This continues immediately after my first story as the round dragged on. By this point my team had settled into our rhythm, and had established ourselves as one of three teams in the race for first place. We desperately tried to keep scores in our head, to figure out where we placed and which questions to go for, but that gets a little tricky when you’re still, you know, Quizzing.
After we lost track, we were just desperately vying for every question we could get. The back and forth between us and the other two teams intensified as the round began to end.
Then it was the last question.
The unofficial captain of my team leaned in close and whispered,
“We have to get this question.”
Little did we know how true that statement was.
We all gritted our teeth and adjusted our hands on the buzzer, resolute.
“Question.”
I had never been more tense.
“Please recite Ephe-”
We pressed that buzzer with everything we had.
“BEEP!” From the expressions of the other teams, it honestly could have been any of us.
The Quizmaster called out my team, and after three seconds of discussion we shoved the boy, the youngest of us, up to the microphone to recite Ephesians 2.8-9.
He did it word-perfect.
We cheered, elated. The Quizmaster announced tenth through fourth places-our team wasn’t one of them, so we knew we at least had third place-before dismissing us all from the stage, and the two other girls ran off to get ready for the Citation ceremony. Our coaches congratulated us, but dodged our questions about our score, claiming they weren’t sure. The boy and I went to find our group and grab seats.
There we sat.
Waiting.
For over two hours while the ceremony dragged on.
Finally, it was nearly over. All that was left to award was Quizzing. We sat straight up in our seats, but our coach urged us to stand and get ready to go up onstage-no matter what, we were about to get an award. I was so nervous I began to have an asthma attack. Thankfully one of my friends tossed my inhaler over as they were announcing third place.
Not us.
The team went up, shook hands, got their medals, and took some pictures.
Then they began the process of announcing who got second place and, by default, who won.
“You all should know this was an incredibly close competition that came down to a difference of 40 points won on the final question.”
I knew. I went pale, my shaking got worse, and tears were in my eyes.
We won.
By that last question, asking one of the easiest verses in our repertoire, we were the Summit 2016 Champions.
They officially announced it, we went onstage, and I have never smiled more. This was literally a dream come true, one I’d been pursuing since third grade, and it was reality.
To this day, this is one of my proudest achievements. Never underestimate what God can and will do through you, because just a year prior this would have been unattainable. God orchestrated everything perfectly for this to happen and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Share more of your favorite Quizzing stories with me, either here in the comments or to my email, summitjourneyalumni@gmail.com. I pray that your Quizzing practices are going well, and feel free to write me with any questions about Quizzing – I’ll try to give my best advice.