St. Louis U. High’s Academic WorldQuest team was hard at work in room M114 this past weekend, taking part in a national competition for the first time in SLUH’s history.

Academic WorldQuest is an annual competition in which different high schools compete against others in a series of trivia-style multiple choice questions. The multiple choice questions are divided into ten categories focused on current events around the world, with 100 total questions. The topics for this year consisted of global protests, the Arab Spring, Uzbekistan, the post-pandemic economy, foreign service, International Labor Organizations, current events, great decisions, fraying alliances, and peace in a world of conflict. 

This year’s team came together at the beginning of the second semester, when social studies teacher Sarah Becvar, who moderates Academic WorldQuest, extended an invite to students in her AP Comparative Government class to try out. At the end of the tryouts, a five person team emerged: seniors Ben Walsh, Andrei Chura, Kevin Hickey, Maurice Safar, and Kevin Hickey. 

The members of the WorldQuest team quickly began studying around the various subjects, evenly splitting up the work. On Feb. 25, after weeks of studying, all of their toil paid off as the team edged Wentzville High School’s delegation by one point to win the local competition. This earned SLUH a spot at the national competition, which was to be held via Zoom on April 17. 

In the aftermath of qualifying for the national competition, the members of the WorldQuest team began to ramp up their activity with regards to studying.

“Once we won the local competition, we started to feel like ‘Yeah, we could win the nationals,’ so we started really trying harder,” said Walsh.

As the final competition approached, the WorldQuest team not only experienced a change in the intensity of their studying, but also in their moderator as well. With Becvar giving birth to her third child, she decided to step back from the club while on maternity leave, and instead handed over the reins to Rob Hill, who is serving as a substitute teacher in Becvar’s classes for the remainder of the year.

Despite the shift in moderators, the Academic WorldQuest team was still able to enjoy a successful run at the national competition. Out of 177 teams from across the United States, SLUH’s delegation finished tied with California’s Palm Desert High School for tenth place.

“It was rather a different experience from last time,” said senior Andrei Chura.  “It was a lot more tense and quiet in the room when we were answering the questions. It was much more like exciting last time. I remember standing up at the board like pointing out what answer I thought was correct and there was all kinds of movement around the classroom.  However, this time, it was a lot more calm and quiet.”

While the team performed admirably, according to Chura, he felt that the team did not perform as well as it did in the preliminary round.

“There were a couple of rounds that we did really well on last time, like a 10/10 or 8/10, but this time, we got more 6/10s,” said Chura. “For example, we had a perfect score on the Uzbekistan category last time, but this time, we scored 6/10. It just shows that we should have studied more even in the categories that we had done well last time.”

The schedule has now ended for the Academic WorldQuest team, and it will wait until next winter before competing again.

 “It really does make you learn about different parts of the world, the moving parts going on throughout the regions of the world. Like Uzbekistan on its own is honestly not the most important country out there, but it really does tell you about how the resources, geographical location, like what country you're situated next to kind of affects the economy and standard of living in the country,” said Chura.