Defeating teams from 10 other schools, three members of the Iowa State Academic Quiz Club took first place at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) tournament last weekend.

Hussam Abusharkh, freshman in pre-med, Christian Casper, sophomore in chemistry, and Rob Hentzel, senior in physics, were the championship team.

“It was a thrill for me because it was my first ever first place tournament in my career. It’s nice to be part of a program that actually wins,” Casper said.

The club was ranked sixth in the nation last year. The ISU team of Josh Kortbein, freshman in mathematics, Chris Mayfield, junior in English, and Helen Takade, sophomore in biology, placed third at the UMKC tournament. Hentzel also won the lightning round.

In the lightning round, “they take the top eight individual scorers [of the tournament] and ask them toss-up questions. They slowly eliminate the lowest scorers until they are down to one,” Mayfield, president of the club, said.

In a regular round, two teams, usually of four members each, answer questions about literature, history, sports, art, science, current events, pop culture and “just about everything,” Mayfield said.

A team receives 10 points for every correctly answered toss-up question and up to 30 points for each correctly answered bonus question. Five points are subtracted from the team’s score for interrupting, which is answering a question incorrectly before the moderator has finished reading it.

Mayfield said any undergraduate or graduate student who is willing to pay the $5 club dues and write questions can be a member of the quiz club. The questions are used to create question packets which are used in rounds of tournaments.

Vice President Stacie Foglesong, sophomore in genetics, said writing questions is her least favorite part of being a member.

“We’re holding a tournament this weekend, so we’re writing all the packets. Some tournaments you go to require a packet of questions to participate,” she said.

Because the ISU Academic Quiz Club is writing all of the question packets and not requiring teams to submit any of their own, the ISU Beautiful And Damned (ISUBAD) tournament this weekend is very popular, Takade, club treasurer, said.

Over 20 teams from as far away as Stanford and Berkeley and as close as Wichita State and the University of Iowa will compete at ISUBAD. The tournament will be held in Pearson Hall from 6-11 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. until completion on Saturday. The public is welcome to watch the tournament.

Any interested student can attend the quiz club practices held every Monday and Thursday from 4-7 p.m. in Room 245 of the Memorial Union.