Oxford

Oxford
Location: Oxford, England
Current President or Coach	Maris Rowe-McCulloch?
National championships	None?
NAQT Page	link

The Oxford University Quiz Society is a student organization at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Among the members of OUQS is a squad of some 40 people who attend weekly practices and occasional tournaments.

Before it was suspended after 2003, Oxford competed in the first six incarnations of the British Student Quiz Championships (although Oxford and Cambridge competed as individual colleges rather than as universities before 2001, meaning that Balliol College, Oxford was technically the British national champion every year from 1998 to 2000). Oxford also hosted the first-ever regular-season tournament in the United Kingdom, an invitational in 2000 that drew thirteen teams, including McMaster University from Hamilton, Ontario. In 2001, Oxford attended the NAQT ICT and finished ninth overall. After Oxford won the 2003 British Student Quiz Championships, however, the British quizbowl circuit fell apart, with no further inter-university tossup-bonus tournaments being run until 2010.

In February 2010, Oxford hosted an SCT, which was won by Manchester. Both Oxford and Manchester attended the ICT in Chicago, Illinois, heralding both the revitalization of quizbowl in the United Kingdom and the increasing integration of the British and American quizbowl circuits. In November 2010, Oxford hosted ACF Fall, a tournament that it staffed while simultaneously fielding seven teams. In February 2011, Oxford hosted another SCT, which it won. Oxford will send a four-person team to the 2011 ICT in Chicago for the second year in a row. In addition, Oxford will participate in the first regular-season tournament held outside of Oxford for many years, a MUT mirror at Manchester in April. Oxford will also compete in the revived British Student Quiz Championships, which will be heavily "Briticized" from the NAQT HSNCT by an editing team led by Oxford player and former Harvard player Kyle Haddad-Fonda.

Despite the lull in inter-university quizbowl in Britain between 2003 and 2010, OUQS continued to compete annually against Cambridge in the Varsity Match, a competition that Oxford has never lost. The June 2010 Varsity Match, which was based on the HSNCT set, saw a team of Edmund Dickinson, Katie McGettigan, Kyle Haddad-Fonda, and Gail Trimble defeat Cambridge.

Every year, OUQS also organizes the Oxford Intercollegiate Quiz, a competition among Oxford colleges run on Briticized NAQT IS sets that draws participants from many colleges. In February and March 2010, OUQS organized the twentieth ICQ, which featured 44 teams and which was won for the second consecutive year by Magdalen College.

OUQS members, competing on behalf of their individual colleges, have also seen great success in recent years in the revived BBC2 television series University Challenge, a program based on and affiliated with College Bowl. In the 2008-2009 series, OUQS member Gail Trimble led Corpus Christi College to the championship, although her team was subsequently disqualified for fielding an ineligible player. In the 2009-2010 series, OUQS member George Woudhuysen captained St. John's College to a second place finish. In the 2010-2011 series, which is currently airing, OUQS member Kyle Haddad-Fonda is a member of the Magdalen College team, which has so far reached the semifinals.

While OUQS cannot participate in as many tournaments as American universities because of the embryonic nature of the student-run quizbowl circuit in the United Kingdom, it is nonetheless noted for having one of the largest teams in the world. Its weekly practices routinely draw over thirty players, and it contributed seven teams to the 2010 ACF Fall.

Trivia

Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, was once the patron of OUQS, a fact that delighted many American quizbowlers at the time.