By Nicolette Olson
Staff Writer
The plans for the Mira Costa Scholar Quiz began over breakfast at the Hermosa Beach IHOP 24 years ago.
In 1987, AP U.S. history and CP block world history teacher William Fauver founded Scholar Quiz with the help of Gary Hartzell, a previous Mira Costa principal.
“Hartzell knew that I was on the winning Quiz Bowl competition at UCLA,” Fauver said. “He indicated that he would like to do a similar competition at Mira Costa that involved questions from all different subjects taught at Costa.”
Shortly after Hartzell talked to Fauver, Jim Ruderman, a previous government teacher, and Jerry Quigley, a retired history teacher who now substitutes at Mira Costa, were brought on board.
“Hartzell, Ruderman, Quigley and I formed the framework of the Scholar Quiz competition during a breakfast meeting in Hermosa Beach in 1987,” Fauver said. “We planned how many teams we would allow, how many questions were to be used and the difficulties of the questions that were to be included.”
The first competition fielded 32 teams. Ruderman, Quigley and Fauver wrote all of the questions and answers themselves to ensure that they ranged across the academic curriculum.
“In 1988, interest was so intense in the Scholar Quiz that we expanded to 64 teams and asked for assistance from the PTSA to help man the rooms,” Fauver said. “The PTSA has been an integral part of the competition ever since.”
Fauver, Ruderman and Quigley soon realized that the task of Scholar Quiz was enormous, and they found that writing the questions themselves was too time consuming.
At that point, they enlisted the services of a question writing company who introduced the famous lightening rounds into the competition.
“Another addition was made to the Scholar Quiz in the mid- ‘90s,”Fauver said. “Mira Costa initiated the awarding of the Sean Barnes Memorial Trophy. The trophy, located in the Administration Building, has the names from every winning team in the competition.”
Fauver ran the Scholar Quiz competition with help from the PTSA committee until 1998. Starting in 1999, Steve Singiser, current CP U.S. history teacher and AP government teacher, joined on. Singiser had won the Scholar Quiz as a senior at Mira Costa in 1991.
“When I took over, Fauver was starting a new family and was too busy to run the Scholar Quiz,” Singiser said.
In 2008, Singiser started writing for a political blog and could no longer continue organizing the Scholar Quiz competition at Costa. At that point, the PTSA took over the task of running the competition.
“The PSTA budget funds the prize money and the teacher lunches during the competition,” PTSA member Chris Gregory said. “In addition, we organize the sign-ups for the students, seed the teams and make the brackets.”
This year, Scholar Quiz will begin on May 31 with 64 teams consisting of four members. The final match is scheduled for June 7.
“I’m really excited for Scholar Quiz this year,” junior Chris O’Brien said. “I’m planning to form a team soon, and we are going to study a lot so we can go far in the competition.”
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