University Challenge team 2012 revealed

The successful members of the University Challenge Warwick University 2012 team have been revealed. Sarah Jane Bodell, Sean Quinn, James Wheatley, team captain Andrew Shaw and reserve Freddie Neve will now go on to compete against other universities in the hope of winning the coveted title.

After an initial general knowledge quiz made up of 40 questions, the applicants were narrowed down to a second round of 20. The chosen 20 were then interviewed and the final 5 team members were selected to go on to represent the University of Warwick.

This year showed an increase in interest, with 185 people applying to represent the University, a significant rise on the 120 applicants reported last year. “This meant we had more candidates to choose from, which should hopefully make for a stronger team” said Students’ Union Societies Officer Matthew Rogers, “I’m confident they’ll get quite far”.

The team will prepare to sharpen their skills through the help of Quiz Society and training organised by team captain Andrew Shaw throughout the year. It is not only knowledge that the team will need to brush up on, but also being able to think under pressure.

“Being able to think up a good answer on the spot is probably the most important thing,” explained team member James Wheatley, who is also reserve for the 2011 team. “Most of the knowledge is going to be stuff you already know, and then there’s so much you can’t really just learn everything.”

“They need to gel quite well together as a team so they need to know when to trust each other for what answers,” commented Rogers. This will be part of the team’s strategy to repeat the success of the 2007 University of Warwick University Challenge Team, who were the first Warwick team to win the competition and remain the only one to have done so.

Currently on its 41st series, University Challenge has filmed 1489 episodes to date. The programme has been on BBC2 in its current format with Jeremy Paxman since 1994, though it originally began on TV screens in 1962.

The team hopes to gain the full support of the University, postgraduate student Sarah Jane Bodell said, “It will be nice to have the whole University behind us”, and Shaw added, “If we get on telly, everyone should watch.”

For anyone hoping to try next year, the message from Shaw was, “Definitely have a go, you’d be surprised by how much you know.” Rogers added, “Anyone who didn’t get onto the team this year, every year we see that people who have already tried out once actually get better each year, so I strongly encourage them to apply again next year.”