El Paso student taking part in national academic competition

The El Paso Community is putting one if it’s best and brightest young minds on the national stage to compete in an event that is widely known as the Super Bowl of the Mind.

18-year-old Nathan Dasilva, a student at Ysleta High School, has high sights set on winning the Quiz Bowl Player National Championship Tournament which begins on April 7th in Chicago.

Dasilva will be going up against some top competition as he faces off against about 100 other brilliant young minds from across the country.

Along with topics like science, math and history, the tournament has evolved with new category’s emerging every year.

Dasilva has already had an extremely prolific academic bowl career but in his past achievements, he’d been able to share the victory with members of his 4-person team but will have no such assistance in Chicago.

“I am somewhat nervous,” Dasilva said. “I think anybody would be. It is the first time I’ve been to an individual national tournament and I’ve never played a game without my team but it is nearly the close of my career here in high school and I am looking to see what I can do by myself.”

But even after he completes the event in Chicago, Dasilva’s time in academic competitions will be far from over.

Dasilva is currently considering a President’s Scholarship to attend Saint Boniventure College in New York were he’d continue his quiz bowl career.

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