The Leonia Quiz Bowl Competition took place at Leonia High School on December 12, 2015. It is formally called the North Jersey Academic Championships or NORJAC for short. Every participating team was comprised of four starters and up to four substitutes. Each team competed in three Jeopardy format qualifying rounds. At the conclusion of these rounds, the top 16 teams returned for the playoffs at noon. The Sweet 16 and Elite 8 followed the Jeopardy format of the preliminary rounds.  The semifinal and final rounds followed a buzzer format with 25 questions asked per round. All Sweet 16 playoff teams received a trophy. The winning team kept the NORJAC Cup for 1 year and the Justin Ziegler Championship Trophy. There are seven categories: Potpourri, Arts & Entertainment, History & Geography, Literature & Language, Math, Science, and Sports. Each of these categories contain four questions that are 100, 75, 50, and 25 points. In each round there also two Pesesky Power Plays that are hidden to the teams. Once a team selects a question that contains a Pesesky Power Play, the team unlocks a string of 5 questions that are worth 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 points.

This year, approximately 60 teams participated from all over the state. Schools are allowed to have more than one team and Wayne Hills contributed two teams. The first team was led by Mallika Ventakachalam, a senior, and the second team was led by Daniel Kang, a junior. The Quiz Bowl team last year was unable to participate in this competition because the head of the competition was severely sick. After her experience, Mallika remarked, “I think we did really well overall for a team with relatively new players and I believe we will do even better in the future.” The Quiz Bowl team has the upcoming BRITE tournament starting in January. Hopefully the team gets far this year.