The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts Quiz Bowl team will compete for the Arkansas Governor’s Quiz Bowl Association Class 7A state title on Saturday, April 25.
ASMSA will play Fort Smith Southside High School in the championship game, which will be held at 1:30 p.m. at the ArkansasTV studios in Conway. The match will be televised live on ArkansasTV, formerly Arkansas PBS, as well as streamed live on arkansastv.gov/live. The Class 7A game is one of seven championship games set for Saturday.
ASMSA is the defending Class 7A champion, winning the 2025 title game against Bryant High School. It was the second Quiz Bowl title in the school’s history, and it was the first time since 2013 that an ASMSA team had played for the state title.
ASMSA earned the right to defend its title by going undefeated in the earlier rounds of the Class 7A state tournament that was held April 11 at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. The team defeated teams from Fayetteville High School, North Little Rock High School and Conway High School in the morning rounds to advance as the No. 2 seed in the afternoon knockout rounds where they defeated Springdale High School and Rogers Heritage High School to earn their title-match berth. Fort Smith Southside was the No. 1 seed in the afternoon bracket based on its team-scoring average.
Team members who will represent ASMSA in the state title game are Jacob Lewis, Ridgely Bond, Jacob Clingan, KC Cavin, Violet Dailey, Errol Nagy, Zoey Terry, Darius Adcock, Daneil Hester and Kene Okanume. Lewis, Bond, Clingan, Cavin, Dailey, Nagy and Terry were all on the 2025 state tournament team.
Lewis, who serves as team captain, and Bond were named to the All-Tournament team as well as All-Star players for their performances during the 2026 state tournament, qualifying them for the All-Stars tournament that will be held after the completion of the season. Lewis answered 9.6 questions per game while Bond averaged 8.4 questions per game in the Aprill 11 rounds. Both earned All-State honors at the 2025 state tournament with Bond being named the tourney MVP.
The team is coached by Caleb Grisham, a mathematics Instructor of Excellence. This is the 10th year he has served as the team’s coach, and ASMSA has participated in every state tournament during his tenure with the exception of 2020 when no state tournament was held because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The team has worked hard all year and (they) are excited to represent ASMSA in the finals,” Grisham said in an email to campus about the finals.