EUGENE–The situation wasn’t trivial at all for University of Oregon senior Sean Cole.

When he learned at the end of the past school year that the university would no longer field a College Bowl team–that there would be no team to compete against other colleges for bragging rights or to dedicate themselves to the knowledge of trivial information, Cole formed one on his own.

But Cole didn’t just form a team; he forged the 2001 regional championship team.

Besides claiming the regional title, the winning Ducks also earned a spot at the NAQT National Championship becoming the first UO team in eight years to compete nationally.

A veteran of the last two UO College Bowl teams, Cole, a political science major from Seaside, teamed with Amy Fuller, a junior Spanish and linguistics major from Oakland, and Philip Huang, a first-year law student from Irvine, Calif. After hours of practice, the UO team competed in February at the National Academic Quiz Tournament (NAQT)’s regional competition in Seattle.

At that tournament, the UO team beat Texas A&M, the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University to capture first place. Huang ranked first in the individual standings, earning more points per game than anyone else and doubling the score of his nearest competitor.

The UO team added Travis Willse, a sophomore physics major from Hillsboro, to their roster and at the beginning of April headed to St. Louis, Mo., in search of a good showing, even a national title.

In spite of their relative inexperience, the UO team members played well, beating teams from Princeton and Williams, as well as the Northeast Regional champion team from Harvard and the nationally ranked University of Pittsburgh. However, they succumbed to Southeast Regional champion Kentucky and to Cal Tech among others, finally placing 27th out of the 36-team field.

In spite of their disappointment in not making a better team showing in the national competition, Cole says Huang’s individual performance–finishing 6th in the individual standings with 53 points per game "helped the UO gain the respect of the other schools."

The future looks bright for the Duck quiz bowlers: three of the team’s four members, including Huang, will return next year to help the University of Oregon defend its Northwest regional title.

—30—

#H-2165/Local,Hometowns/sb