On March 23rd, the Carlsbad Junior Varsity Academic League team competed in the semifinals for the entire district, among the farthest the team has ever gotten. Although they were unable to make it into the finals, the achievement is incredibly impressive for all of the hardworking members of the team.

Sophomore Cate Maynard recounted how much hard work and dedication the team put into preparing for this year’s season.

“We have lots of assignments with tons of information and Quizlet sets so we can study and work on certain areas of information we may be lacking in,” Maynard said. “This basically just lets us prepare better for the matches since we become more familiar with the information.”

The entire team – Varsity, Junior Varsity, and Freshman – worked together to study and prepare for the upcoming tournaments. The system used for the tournaments was entirely different from what most of the senior members were used to as they needed to be online due to COVID-19.

“For the matches, we joined a big zoom call with breakout rooms for all the school teams, as well as breakout rooms for the matches,” Maynard said.

After deciding who would be put in to play first, the tournament would officially begin and the competition was on. Online changed a lot, including how many points a team could earn.

“They scored it a little differently this year, so the matches were a lot more high scoring, which honestly just made it feel more intense [but in a fun way],” Maynard said.

The method for answering questions had also changed. Now that teams were online, competitors could not just press a buzzer and speak out before anyone else. Instead, they had to turn to the chat feature on zoom.

“Normally we have a buzzer system set up for in-person matches, but since that wouldn’t work online we would just type BUZZ into the chat as a way to buzz in,” Maynard said.

Beyond this, there were different types of questions as well – and Carlsbad excelled at all of them.

“There are the main toss-up questions anyone can answer, and then if your team gets it right you get a multiple part bonus question where you’re allowed to all be unmuted and talk to your team in the time allotted to come up with your answer,” Maynard said.