On February 25th, five students from Heritage High School traveled to Atlanta to compete in the Criminal Justice Quiz Bowl. The Heritage team placed fifth out of 17 other schools.

The Criminal Justice Quiz Bowl is a SkillsUSA event that our school has competed in for the past three years. 17 other schools competed with our students to answer criminal justice related questions. The team that buzzes in first and gets the answer correct gets 25 points. If the answer is incorrect, the team loses 6 points. The questions cover all three levels of the Criminal Justice class. Five students were on Heritage’s team: Maggie Chen, Emily Lin, Jade Taylor, Sammi Williamson, and Waverli Brown. 

“It’s specifically a criminal justice Quiz Bowl, so most of the questions are based on the criminal justice class. But, some of the questions are actually SkillsUSA knowledge, which was the portion that I knew most about.” Emily Lin said. “It was really nerve racking leading up to the competition, but once we got up there, our nerves went away.”

The team spent lots of time studying and practicing before the Quiz Bowl. All five of them met in Officer Crane’s office every Wednesday and Friday about a month prior to the competition. Officer Crane studied with the team and gave them practice questions, which helped them a lot along the way. Although it isn’t necessary to compete, the knowledge from taking all of the Criminal Justice classes also helps tremendously.

“We’d go through the chapters we were supposed to study and practice answering different questions about criminal justice. For next year, I’d definitely focus on each and every chapter and focus on significant events that happened because that was the majority of the questions we were asked,” Sammi Williamson said. “It was kind of stressful [at the competition] because we weren’t prepared for those types of questions, and the questions were on material that we learned very early in the class.”

Next year, the two things that the team wants to focus on is confidence to answer the questions in time and studying more in-depth before the competition. However, Waverli Brown, Emily Lin, and Maggie Chen will no longer be participating in the Quiz Bowl, as they are graduating this year; only Jade Taylor and Sami Williamson will be returning. To compete in the event, there needs to be at least three contestants participating, so Jade and Sami need one more member to be able to play in the competition.