College Bowl Will Visit L.A.

Harvard's College Bowl Team qualified Sunday for a national competition in Los Angeles this spring by placing first in a regional trivia tournament.

The team, which calls itself the "Muskrats," defeated Dartmouth in the final game of the two-day, round-robin tournament held at Framingham State College.

"The team performed essentially perfect," said Muskrats captain Eric B. Evans '93.

Evans said the team clinched victory by answering "summa cum laude" to the question: "Of the following degrees, cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude, which is the highest?"

Participants included 16 college teams from the New England area, comprised of four undergraduate contestants and one graduate student, according to team member Ali Vaezy '93.

Evans was unable to participate on Saturday, forcing the team to compete with only four members Vaezy, Asmin V. Pathare '93, Roger W. Lee '93 and Jordan Katine, a second-year graduate student in physics.

"We won [the Saturday games] all decisively, very decisively," Vaezy said. "Our performance was great on both days."

Evans returned for the Sunday play-off with Dartmouth, which turned out to be Harvard's toughest opponent of the tournament. Vaezy said Harvard had to come back from a 105-point deficit.

Although Harvard's first place finish qualifies the team for the College Bowl International national tournament in April, the Muskrats might not be able to raise the funds for the trip to Los Angeles, Evans said.

"We are going to try every option we can think of," Evans said. "As far as we can determine, Harvard has never won a national tournament. It would be a shame if we couldn't be the first team because of lack of funds."

The team raised a $500 entrance fee for the regional tournament by organizing an intramural trivia game and by charging a participation fee.

"A lot of this was out of our pockets," Vaezy said. "Almost all of the other teams are funded by their colleges. In fact, we might be the only team that isn't."