Texas A&M Vet Students Turn Setback Into Success With National Quiz Bowl Win
Story by Michaela Dunn ‘26, VMBS Marketing & Communications
A team of third-year veterinary students from the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) won the national Quiz Bowl championship at the 2025 American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) conference in Omaha, Nebraska.
The win marks the first time in more than a decade that VMBS students have earned the title. After a first-round loss in 2024, the team returned with a renewed focus and advanced through a 27-team bracket to secure the championship.
VMBS students also received national recognition in the AABP case report and poster competitions, making the conference a strong showing for the college.
The 2025 AABP Quiz Bowl champions include:
- Jack Detten, from Hereford, Texas, who is pursuing the production track with plans to work in feed yard medicine or general large animal practice.
- Kailee Knezek, from Yoakum, Texas, who plans to serve a rural community through mixed animal medicine, with a potential shift toward production practice.
- Chris Box, from Gonzales, Texas, who is focused on cow-calf medicine and feedlot practice within the production track.
- John Deramus, from Coleman, Texas, who is pursuing mixed animal medicine and hopes to serve as a rural practitioner along Texas’s I-35 corridor.
Preparation With Purpose
The AABP Quiz Bowl is a fast-paced competition in which four-member teams answer rapid-fire questions focused exclusively on cattle.
Last year, a first-round Quiz Bowl loss left Box disappointed, but it also shaped the team’s approach heading into this year’s event.
“Chris really just led the team and took charge,” Deramus said. “He came back last year and was adamant that we had to make a strong showing, so we all bought in at the beginning of this semester, studied, and made it happen.”
The team built a study bank of more than 120 questions using lecture notes, veterinary preparation materials, and questions Box had documented from the previous year.
“In the week leading up, I probably studied three hours,” Deramus said. “And then we actually drove to Omaha — it was a 12-hour drive — so we probably studied for 10 of the 12 hours.”
Their preparation not only helped the team succeed in Omaha but also reinforced material for the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination (NAVLE), which all fourth-year veterinary students must pass to become licensed.
“Since it’s the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, anything cattle is fair game,” said Dr. Kevin Washburn, professor in food animal internal medicine at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and faculty adviser for the student AABP chapter. “It’s basically the NAVLE, except there is only one species — cattle.”
Rising To The Challenge
Despite their preparation, not every category played to the team’s strengths. Several competing schools brought expertise in areas like dairy medicine, which gave teams at other veterinary schools a competitive edge.
“We got smoked in a lot of the dairy questions compared to some of the schools we were up against,” Box said. “All those schools just have such a big dairy presence, and at A&M, beef is king.”
The team focused on answering toss-up questions correctly to earn chances at bonus questions.
“Those bonus questions definitely helped us,” Knezek said. “In the first round, we were up enough that we didn’t really need them, but the last two rounds were so close that we needed both the toss-up and the bonus to pull ahead.”
The championship came down to the final toss-up. This time, the same student who had walked away defeated the year before buzzed in with the correct answer, securing the national title for Texas A&M.
“I couldn’t attend this year, but I was getting the play-by-play, and then somebody sent me a video of the question that won it,” Washburn said. “It was Chris Box who answered that last question. It was really cool.”
In another twist, Washburn said in that video, he recognized the event’s emcee as Dr. Brian Weaver, who along with his wife, Dr. Leslie Weaver, are Texas A&M veterinary graduates and were both members of the Quiz Bowl team when they were at Texas A&M. Now, the pair are faculty clinicians at Kansas State University.
Rounding Up Bragging Rights
In addition to the quiz bowl victory, VMBS students earned national honors in case report and poster competitions, and one, fourth-year veterinary student Haley Dueñas, brought home a $7,500 Zoetis Foundation Scholarship.
- Alyssa Otto placed second nationally in the student case report competition.
- Katherine Walsh was selected to present in the student case report competition.
- Antonio Silva also represented the university with a poster presentation.
For the case report competition, students at veterinary schools from across the country write and submit for consideration a 300- or fewer-word abstract on any veterinary medical case.
To help students prepare for that, at noon on Tuesdays throughout the semester, anywhere from 20-30 AABP student chapter members will do rounds with faculty and residents in the Large Animal Teaching Hospital’s Food Animal Service.
“They see a case when they’re on rounds that we talk about, they get the medical record, and they put together an abstract,” Washburn said. “Then, among all the AABP student chapters in the United States, the AABP picks 10 abstracts for presentation.
“Not only were Alyssa and Katherine chosen as two of 10, but because AABP picks five abstracts for research reports and five for a clinical case, they were actually selected as two of the five case-based abstracts in the country,” Washburn said. “For the last two or three years, students from VMBS have placed first or second in that case report competition; Chris Box won first place last year.”
Confidence In The Classroom And Beyond
For the students, these competitions are a chance to see how their training holds up under pressure.
“You don’t realize what you know until you’re put into a high-pressure situation,” Detten said. “It’s not like the high pressure of clinical practice, but when you’re sitting there with four other kids from different schools and you’re the only one who knows the answer to a question, you come to realize that we learn an awful lot here.”
“I learned not to underestimate your knowledge level, because they pull questions from first year that, at the time, I thought, ‘I’m never going to remember that,’ but two years later, I was able to answer those questions,” Knezek agreed.
That pressure became a turning point, showing them just how far they have come in their veterinary educational careers.
“It was kind of cool, because, sure, we had a question bank, but the total question bank for the conference Quiz Bowl is something like 700 questions. Our question bank is 120, so there was a lot of stuff we knew we were potentially not going to know or not have covered before,” Box said. “But during the competition, there were a lot of questions that I think we were able to just think about, use reason, and then come up with an answer that was correct, and that was just a good feeling.”
“The biggest thing is the sense of confidence,” Deramus added. “It really lets you know you’re capable — more so than you think you are.”
Their success reflects both the student’s dedication and the strength of the VMBS’ food animal track.
“The students did all the work, and it’s really cool to see them excel because the questions are so specific,” Washburn said. “Seeing them do so well, especially on food animals, just makes me so proud. This is what we’re doing this for.”
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For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216
