The NMU quiz bowl team will be holding its first campus-wide quiz bowl on Saturday, March 31.

Quiz bowl member and junior political science major Taylor Tillotson said while this is an intramural tournament, students shouldn’t be turned off by the competitive nature of quiz bowl.

“We want to open peoples’ minds to a fun experience,” Tillotson said. “We know that people here enjoy learning.

“We just like to have a good time and we know a lot of other people like to learn and have a good time also.”

The event will have a standard format, and will include trivia ranging from history to chemistry.

“Quiz bowl is the kind of evolutionary predecessor of ‘Jeopardy’,” Tillotson said. “Any major has a great chance of being a very good quiz bowl player.”

The event will take place at 11 a.m. on Saturday, in various rooms of the West Science building.

Faculty adviser Michael Joy, as well as members of the team, all look forward to finding ways to improve and grow within the organization, which is where events like the quiz bowl come into the picture.

“The team has basically doubled in size in the last three years; we currently have a solid group of 10 students who regularly attend practice,” Joy said. “We sent two teams to the sectional competition in Chicago last month. Another facet of the quiz bowl event this weekend is fundraising, which will help with travel costs for competitions.

Tillotson said the team attends at least one competition a semester, where the team competes with other Division II teams, but more frequently with Division I teams like the University of Michigan, Chicago and Minnesota.

“We’re still a relatively fledgling organization,” Tillotson said. “We want to build more of a stable or more permanent intramural program in the future, then it will be more like the athletic intramural teams.”

While most members of the official quiz bowl campus team will be in attendance at the event, Tillotson said there is nothing to fear and that students should come for a good time.

“We’re hosting this competition in order to build the organization and attract more people,” he said. “If we can attract more people, it’s more fun and we can get more experiences.”

The event is $15 per team, and Tillotson emphasized that there were prizes available for winners. Six teams are already registered for the event, but teams can register up until the time of the event.