When hearing the term team bonding, most people picture bonding on the football field or the basketball court. People rarely think of team bonding as an academic activity. However, quiz bowl is a way for students to bond as a team while displaying their intellectual abilities, and that’s just what Yutan’s quiz bowl team is doing this season.
“In quiz bowl we’re all together and have to work as a team, so we all are close and we have a lot of fun,” sophomore Lincoln Hoffart said.
As a team, the students have to work in small groups during competitions to answer more questions than the opposing team.
“[Quiz bowl] is a four-person on four-person competition with different types of questions, like music questions, English questions and other types of questions,” Hoffart said.
Since quiz bowl includes questions in categories like music, math, science and literature, students need to excel academically in those categories.
“Quiz bowl is for anybody who likes competing but is also academically inclined. Our team is made up of anybody who knows a lot of trivia and is interested in competition,” quiz bowl sponsor Nealy Freeman said.
Not only does quiz bowl give them opportunities to compete academically, but it provides a space where students can work as a team.
“My favorite thing about quiz bowl is probably just the camaraderie with the rest of the team. It’s definitely a lot of fun. We take [quiz bowl] seriously, but we still have fun,” senior Tannen Honke said.
Even though they have fun together, the team members still have goals they want to accomplish this season.
“My goals for this season are to get further into state by getting past districts, winning districts and then hopefully win it all, but at least make it to state,” senior Tyler Witt said.
The returning team members are hoping that last year’s experience will help them to get to that next level.
“Last year we had a bad first meet, and then we were able to build on that and get third at districts. This year we started better than we did last year, so I’m hoping that we can finish better than we did last year,” Honke said.
To achieve these goals, they have to practice just like any other team would.
“We practice in the mornings on Fridays and we do kind of a mock quiz bowl round where I ask them questions and then we kind of strategize on how to answer them,” Freeman said.
The students involved in quiz bowl have already attended one competition and plan on attending a minimum of two more regular season competitions before conference and districts.
“Since we haven’t had a very active program in the past, we are hoping to go to more competitions this year,” said Freeman.
Even though this season has already started, Freeman still encourages students to consider giving it a try next year.
“I would recommend quiz bowl to students because it’s a great way to show your knowledge, to apply what we’re learning in our classes in a different way and to compete with other schools,” Freeman said.
