Teddy Hall take on Bristol University

Make sure you tune in to watch Teddy Hall take on Bristol University at 8pm on Monday 11 March.

This will be Teddy Hall’s second-quarter final, after beating Emmanuel College, Cambridge 190-55. Teams have to win two quarter-final matches to progress to the semi-final (or lose two quarter-finals to be knocked out), so we are halfway there!

The team, made up of Marceline (2017, Economics & Management) Lizzie (2015, Geography), Freddy (2016, History) and Agastya (2017, Materials Science), have been training hard for their next match and have been supported by current postgraduate student Ben Fernando (2016, DPhil in Environmental Science). Ben said the following about the experience:

“I was on the Imperial College London team in 2015-16, where we made it to the quarter-finals before being knocked out by Liverpool and York. It was a great experience (especially getting to see Jeremy Paxman’s legendary wit at work!) but as you can only be on the show once, it wasn’t something that I was going to be able to do again. Therefore, I’ve since ‘retired’ from active quizzing for the most part (only returning for the odd pub quiz and the Oxford Intercollegiate Quiz of course) and moved on to helping successive teams prepare. In 2016 I helped Imperial’s team train alongside some of my old team from the previous year, but unfortunately they went out in the first round.

“Teddy Hall hadn’t been on in a while when I arrived at the college in 2016, but there were plenty of keen students willing to try out. I ran the try-outs in 2017, and was responsible for selecting the current team. A lot of interest seems to have been raised about the selection process (Lizzie was even quoted in The Economist) because Teddy Hall is one of the most successful gender-balanced teams recently, which is uncommon in a competition in which all-male teams are not uncommon. I made the decision to pick the team entirely based on their quizzing ability and range of subject knowledge, which I hope has come across in their performances so far – it goes to show that with the right group attitude and support, it’s entirely possible to have a diverse team with excellent knowledge across a variety of subjects.

“In terms of training, most of what we’ve done is practice sessions and of course, pub visits on quiz nights. When we started the practice sessions I could mostly hold my own against the four of the team, but the rate at which they improved was phenomenal! By the end of the training process, they were confidently beating other teams from across the College and the University by enormous margins. So, now all that remains is to see how they fare in future games!”

Good luck to the team and fingers crossed for that second win! The College will screen the show in the Doctorow Hall on Monday evening, should you wish to attend to support the team. All students, Fellows, staff and alumni are welcome to join us.