UNC Hosts International Quiz Bowl

"We lost in the final to Chicago last year, and it came down to the last question," Kemezis said. "But I'm still confident."

Trying to remain cool and collected is key during the National Academic Quiz Intercollegiate Tournament, hosted this weekend by the Carolina Academic Team for the first time ever.

Kemezis, 25, a member of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Division I quiz team, is relaxing outside of Dey Hall in the midst of playoff competition Saturday afternoon. "I just like the competition, whether we win or lose, and a lot of people find it intellectually rewarding," he said. "And it's good to be at UNC despite the fact that I wasn't accepted here as an undergraduate."

Members of the Carolina Academic Team agreed about the benefits of hosting the tournament.

Junior Grayson Holmes, the team's president, said that UNC applied for the hosting duties last April as a joint bid with Duke University but that UNC was eventually asked to host because of the large size of the campus. "It's probably the most popular and biggest quiz bowl tournament in the nation," Holmes said.

Hannah Johnson, vice president of the Carolina Academic Team and co-director of the competition with Holmes, said the duties of the host campus are extensive and include registering teams, asking questions during the tournament and running various errands.

Grayson said UNC did not participate in the tournament because the duties of hosting the event were too encompassing.

"We have about a 60-member staff over the two day competition," Johnson said. "We are proud to host it because this is the best of the best competing."

Throughout one of their final playoff matches, Kemezis and the rest of the Michigan team are striving to be the best of the best.

In a small room on the first floor of Dey, Kemezis and his teammates, Michael Davidson, David Thorsley and captain Zeke Berdichevsky are in the middle of an 18-minute round match and sit face to face with the four-man University of California-Berkeley team.

But Michigan and Berkeley are just two of 68 teams from across the United States, Canada and Great Britain which traveled to UNC for the competition Saturday.

Since 9 a.m., the teams have been playing match after match with their collegiate contemporaries in round robin games, similar to the NCAA basketball tournament.

At about 3:30 p.m., the tournament is heading into sweet 16 mode as the teams compete for a berth into the finals later in the afternoon.

The contest consists of mixed college-bowl style questions as opposed to strictly academic or popular culture trivia. In their Berkeley matchup alone, the Michigan team fielded a question about Ellen DeGeneres and then had to follow it up by answering questions about the most recent Italian presidential election.

After a close victory over Berkeley, Kemezis, who received his undergraduate degree at Stanford University before heading to Michigan for graduate work in classics, said the match encompassed both what he enjoyed and found most difficult about the tournament.

"The best part for me is meeting different people and competing, but also the hardest part of tournament is playing against teams like the Berkeley team," Kemezis said.

Michigan barely defeats the University of Virginia in their final playoff match but remains undefeated in the playoffs, 5-0, and in the entire competition, 15-0.

And all of the team's hard work ultimately pays off in the form of a strong victory over UVa. in the finals, by a score of 575-95.

"We had four close games, but everyone on the team just played well; everything just clicked," Kemezis said after the win.

And for Kemezis and the victorious Michigan team, the long days won't soon stop.

"In two weeks there is another national competition, and in three weeks there's a college bowl," Kemezis said.

"Plus, I have three term papers to work on."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.