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This year, George Mason’s intercollegiate quiz bowl team debuted on the national stage. Their A-Team won two major tournaments—the first ever won in the university’s quiz bowl history. 

They won the Upper Mid-Atlantic edition of ACF Fall in October 2025, hosted by Rutgers University, and the 2026 Happy Hippopotamus Invitational (HHI) put on by George Washington University.  

Then they went on to nationals, placing highly in Division 2 of the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) Intercollegiate Championship Tournament (ICT), which will allow them the chance to compete for Division 1 next year.  

Although 2026 was the third year of this iteration of the club, George Mason had fielded tournament competition teams from the late 1990s to 2016 before the student organization went into hibernation. 

That changed when atmospheric science major Matthew Bucek, co-founder of the current quiz bowl team, arrived for his first year at George Mason. He had competed in all four years of high school and was looking forward to continuing in college.  

“When I came here and saw that there was no team, I thought my quiz bowl days were over,” Bucek said. “But I learned that my dorm neighbor had competed in high school and wanted to continue too. Since you only need two people to start a club, we brought the team back to life in 2023.” 

Co-founders Bucek and Almir Keating struggled to find consistent membership for the first semester, with only three people showing up at the first meeting. Things started to turn around in the fall semester of that year, when recruitment efforts started to pay off.  

In that first season, they won less than half of their games: 21 out of 43.  

“Our first year, we weren’t very good,” James Meek, a graduate student in social work and current member of the A-Team, said. “It was very informal at the beginning. But then we decided to take more responsibility.”  

The team recruited new members, eventually coming to field three teams this year: the A-, B-, and C-level teams, where the best team is reserved for the players who were improving the most or playing the best. Each team officially competes with four players, and 20 George Mason students competed in 2026.  

“We changed the culture in terms of study. Matt and I also just got way better, learning the game and knowledge base better, and gaining the ability to anticipate what they're going to ask,” said Meek. 

They shifted their study strategy from having everyone try to learn everything and backstop one another, to specializing in different subjects. This year, out of the 60 games they played, they lost only 10.  

The group also hosted a tournament for the first time. “We did an intercollegiate ‘Trash’ tournament, which means they ask only pop culture questions,” said Meek. 

The team also created their own question sets—an arduous process—and another school is now using those sets in their own tournaments. 

In addition to growing in size and skill, the team is forging friendships and study skills that will last lifetimes.  

“My goal is getting promoted to B-Team,” said forensic science major Jun Chen, who has competed on the C-Team as a science specialist for two semesters. “I've gotten to bond with a lot of people. Everyone is so supportive and encouraging. Even when we mess up, we get straight back to it.”