duPont Manual captures sixth National Journalism Quiz Bowl win in Nashville
Students from duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky were named National Journalism Quiz Bowl champions on Nov. 15 at the Fall JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in Nashville.
The winning team featured four students representing duPont, freshman Elias Wright, junior Isabella Shory and seniors Nora Ruscoe and Ben Skipworth. The team is advised by Liz Palmer.
“It’s really crazy, because I participated in Quiz Bowl my freshman year, and I think we placed fourth in the fall one, and then we won in San Francisco [in 2023], and I haven’t been back to a conference since,” Ruscoe said. “So being back here and being able to win has just been so incredible, and I’m so grateful that I got to participate.”
“We all practice with quizlets and stuff on the bus here and in the weeks before this,” Wright said. “I read the news a lot, so the current events I’m normally pretty good at, although I was beaten to the buzzer by that one guy in the final. It’s just a lot of memorization.”
“This is my third time, so third time winning the national [Quiz Bowl] championship,” Shory said. “So really exciting to bring the trophy home again.”
“I was really nervous,” Skipworth said. “I thought we were gonna fail at the preliminaries, and I thought we were gonna fail here, but we won.”
To determine the initial seeding of the 50 competing teams, the teams of four students took an online qualifying test on Nov. 14. The next day, the top 16 qualifying teams met for rapid-fire buzzer rounds, answering questions pertaining to current events, American history, journalism law, media terminology and civics. The team that scored the highest of 10 questions proceeded to the next round and for the final round, the winner had to score the highest out of 20 questions.
The final matchup was between duPont and Cherry Hill High School East in New Jersey. The Cherry Hill East team featured juniors Mason Petkov and Chloe Ren, and seniors Landon Schuster and Nico Spatucci. The team is advised by Greg Gagliardi.
At the outset of the competition, duPont was seeded first and challenger Cherry Hill was seeded third. The final score was duPont 8, Cherry Hill 6.
This is duPont Manual’s sixth Quiz Bowl win, back-to-back with their win this past spring in Seattle. Previous victories include fall 2023 in Boston, spring 2023 in San Francisco, fall 2014 in Washington, D.C. and spring 2014 in San Diego.
The 16 finalist teams:
DuPont Manual High School, Louisville, Kentucky
Strath Haven High School, Wallingford, Pennsylvania
Cherry Hill High School East (#1), Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Francis Howell North High School, Saint Charles, Missouri
Carlmont High School (#1), Belmont, California
West Linn (Oregon) High School
Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, Ohio
The Nueva School, Hillsborough and San Mateo, California
Carlmont High School (#2), Belmont, California
Cherry Hill High School East (#2), Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Carlmont High School (#3), Belmont, California
American Heritage Schools, Broward Campus, Plantation, Florida
The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Homestead High School, Cupertino, California
Redwood High School, Larkspur, California
Clarke Central High School, Athens, Georgia
Cover photo: Isabella Shory, Nora Ruscoe, Ben Skipworth, Elias Wright
