Coastal Carolina University’s Quiz Bowl team recently won third place in the 7th annual Big South Athletic Conference College Bowl Championship at Winthrop University in Rock Hill.

CCU team members were Jordan Rutherford, biology junior from Spartanburg; Amber Eckersley, history senior from Conway; Emma Johnson, marine science junior from Maiden, N.C.; Jonathan Mizell, history major from Gray Court; and Denrey Christy, math and music senior from Galivants Ferry. Rutherford also earned third place from among the top 12 individual scorers.

David Duncan, a professor in CCU’s Department of Math and Statistics, served as CCU’s team coach with assistance from Jim Wright, instructional resource consultant in Instructional Technology Services.

This is the second consecutive year that CCU has placed third in the regional event. Liberty University has won first place for six out of seven tournaments since the bowl’s inception in 2006. The bowl features 20-minute matches. Teams answer questions on a variety of subjects, from pop culture to history to sports, created exclusively for this tournament by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC.

The idea for the tournament originated with the Big South League’s Academic Consortium. The event is designed to develop institution scholarships outside of athletics and to share resources in ways that benefit students and league member institutions. The Consortium also plans the Undergraduate Research Symposium (BigSURS) among Big South member institutions, begun in 2007 first hosted by Coastal Carolina.