On Monday, May 19th, East’s MasterMinds team became the Buffalo Region champions for the first time in six years. They will face off against the champions from the Syracuse, Rochester, and Albany regions for the state title in June.
MasterMinds is a quiz bowl league for schools in upstate New York. It is divided into four regions (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany) which are subdivided into leagues with five or six schools per league. Buffalo has five leagues; this year, all three Williamsville schools were in league 3 along with Eden, Cardinal O’Hara and Niagara Catholic. Each league hosts 5 meets once a month during the school year; during these meets, each school will play two or three games. The three schools who have won the most games advance to the playoffs; all three Williamsville schools advanced from league 3.
MasterMinds uses questions from the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (the most popular quiz bowl league in the nation) with a college bowl-style format. Each team can have four players compete at a time; since substitutions can be made halfway through each game, most schools bring more than four players to meets. Players must ring in and be recognized to answer toss-up questions; if they are correct, they win ten points for their team and give their team the opportunity to answer three bonus questions. Bonus questions are usually related to each other; the entire team can work together to produce the answer. The team with the most points after a 16-minute game wins.
The number of points each player scores on toss-ups is recorded and used to create a leaderboard for each league. The top five players on each leaderboard at the end of the year are the “All-Stars” of their respective league; the highest-scoring player in each league is the league’s “MVP.” In league 3, Alex Hedges of Williamsville South was the league’s MVP; Mandela Namaste and Ananya Nrusimha of East and Sarah Schwartz of North were also All-Stars.
Playoffs used a double elimination bracket; teams needed to lose twice before they dropped out of the competition. Two schools with no losses (East and South) as well as four schools with one loss (Kenmore West, Nichols, North, and Orchard Park) advanced to the final round of playoffs.
All three Williamsville schools beat out their competition to advance to the last rounds of playoffs. In their first game in the final round, East came back from a huge deficit at the half to win a decisive 280-140 victory against South. In the championship game, East managed to prevail against North with a score of 330-180.
The last time East’s MasterMinds team went to states, they also took the state championship home. This year’s MasterMinds team hopes to continue that trend.
