Photo: Sixth grader Arin Parsa, left, was victorious in the recent National Academic Quiz Tournaments’ Quiz Bowl event
Arin Parsa, 11, an Indian American sixth grader from San Jose, California, has won the top award as the National Academic Quiz Bowl Champion. This was the first-ever individual player tournament hosted in the US by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments for middle schoolers.
Parsa, from the Challenger Almaden school, is the youngest player to receive this honor, according to a news release.
The top three students in the championship were all Indian American middle schoolers, with Parsa beating out Chicago-based Quest Academy seventh-grader Rohan Ganeshan in the final head-to-head match. The third place was won by Pareekshit Krishna, an eighth-grader from William Hopkins Junior High School in San Jose.
NAQT organizes premier middle school, high school, community college and college national quiz bowl championships in North America.
The day-long championship tournament was an invitational-only event hosted in Chicago recently.
Parsa beat out the field of 85 bright middle schoolers invited from all over the US who had stellar quiz bowl records in regionals across the US states throughout the year, the release said.
Students competed for the overall champion award as well as subject awards in science and math, history, geography, literature, fine arts, pop culture and sports, social sciences and philosophy, and current events.