Quiz Bowl Teams

Each week, the Quiz Bowl Teams will discuss strategies for different types of questions; test their knowledge with prior years’ questions; practice their reaction, timing, and use of buzzers; and build their confidence. Team activities will also prepare members for academic bees (individual events.)

The teams are structured around the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) and the International Academic Competitions (IAC) programs. Quiz Bowl is a competition in which two student teams face off to answer questions from a variety of areas including history, literature, science, fine arts, current events, popular culture, sports, and more. Quiz bowls use a buzzer system which adds anticipation and excitement to the competition. Bowls also have the challenge of toss-up and bonus questions.

Compass hosts two Quiz Bowl teams:

• Middle School Quiz Bowl Team– for students in 6th-8th grade*
• High School Quiz Bowl Team– for students in 9th-12th grade*

Grade* is defined by student’s age-based enrollment if he/she were in traditional school without acceleration, grade skipping, or delayed entry. Contact team organizers to discuss a younger student joining or “playing up” by a year.

Homeschooled students from northern Virginia (Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, and Prince William Counties) are eligible to participate on a Compass team. To meet eligibility rules of tournaments, students must be enrolled at their “school” for 90 days. Therefore members of the Compass Quiz Bowl Teams must be enrolled in at least one class first quarter and one class second quarter.

If your child is from another area or you have questions about eligibility, please contact the team organizer for clarification.

Compass Quiz Bowl Teams will meet weekly following the Compass academic calendar:

• Middle School Quiz Bowl Team– Thursdays from 3:00 pm- 4:00 pm
• High School Quiz Bowl Team– Mondays from 3:00 pm- 4:00 pm

Tournaments are always optional, but members are encouraged to participate for fun, for experience, and to enhance their standings. The tentative tournament schedule is:

• Quizbowl 4 All Fall Tournament– October 18, 2025 (Herndon, VA, at Compass Homeschool Program)
• Quizbowl 4 All New Year Tournament– January 17, 2026 (Herndon, VA, at Compass Homeschool Program)
• Quizbowl 4 All Winter Tournament– February 28, 2026 (Herndon, VA, at Compass Homeschool Program)
• Thomas Jefferson Middle School Tournament – TBD
• National Academic Bowl Fall Middle School League – TBD
• National History Bowl Fall Middle School League – TBD

Haughton Neppl began competing in Quizbowl in 2017 while attending Compass. Now in 11th grade, Haughton has assisted coaching middle school quizbowl camps through the Texas Quizbowl Alliance and has been the Head Student Coach of Georgetown Day School’s middle school students (5th – 8th grades) for the last two years.  Haughton also founded and heads Quizbowl for All (“QB4ALL”), a group dedicated to providing mentoring for coaches and financial assistance for any student for which tournament registration fees are otherwise a hardship.  

Haughton has won numerous awards nationally and internationally competing in both academic team-based bowls and individual-based bees. He has captained or co-captained teams that have placed in the top 10 at national and international championships on five separate occasions, including leading Team Virginia to a third place finish at the 2023 International History Olympiad in Rome, Italy.  In individual competitions, he qualified for national or international championship final rounds on 12 separate occasions, placing among the top three students nationally four times.  

Haughton’s mother Randy Neppl will serve as the adult advisor to both clubs.

Sign up for the Quiz Bowl Clubs through the Compass Activity Fees page.

The $125 membership fee covers team registration fees for 3 area competitions, team t-shirts, and year-end trophies. If the team decides to participate in additional competitions, advances to finals or nationals, or individuals compete in bees, participants will incur additional registration fees.

Coach Haughton recommends the follow resources:

• Quizbowl Resource Center – A truly massive database of published question sets available to access.
• IAC Past Questions – A repository of nearly every question set published pre-2023 by International Academic Competitions, a company that runs many quizbowl-esque events.    
• QBReader – A website that uses the above sources (especially the former) to read quizbowl questions for single and multiplayer, generate frequency lists, allow for searching for questions containing specific text, and more.  QBReader is very customizable in terms of difficulty and category, and is in my opinion the single most useful site to prepare for quizbowl.    
• Protobowl – A predecessor of QBReader that is still somewhat popular despite honestly being mostly obsolete.    
• Anki – The most common flashcard app for quizbowl.  Kind of a time commitment so I would not recommend unless you are extremely invested in quizbowl, but that being said it is hands down the most effective method to study.    
• NAQT’s “You Gotta Know” – Hundreds of themes with summaries of the 10 or so most common answers for each.  However, most themes/answers are way more obscure than advertised on the site, so don’t get bogged down.   
• SCOP Sheets – Similar in style to You Gotta Knows but with much broader themes and more common topics.  However, they do not go into much depth when explaining each topic.    
• Educational-themed Youtube Videos – “Definitely the most entertaining way to improve, and a great way to be productive without using much energy. Some of my personal favorite channels for quizbowl include”:
  • Military History: Kings and Generals, History Marche, Baz Battles, Epic History
  • Other History: History Matters, History Dose, Extra History, Armchair Historian
  • Science: Kurzgesagt, Veritasium
  • Other Topics: Geography Now, Crash Course, Primal Space, Neo, Fern