When people think of winter activities, most think of sports like basketball and wrestling, but quiz bowl is another activity students can participate in. Instead of being tested on their athletic abilities, however, students are tested on their knowledge of subjects such as geography, language arts and mathematics.
“You have to have a lot of general knowledge,” senior Tannen Honke said. “You have to be able to understand what questions they’re asking, so sometimes they throw a lot of hard words at you, but in reality, the questions are usually a lot simpler than they sound.”
In quiz bowl, teams of four or five people compete against other schools in a bracket or round-robin tournament. Two teams face off at a time, where they are asked the same question, and whoever buzzes in first gets to answer the question. Whichever team gets the most answers right at the end of the round wins.
Having team members with different strengths in different subjects is a helpful strategy for answering questions.
“Sometimes I may think I know it, but maybe it’s a math question,” Honke said. “I know Nolan (Gayer) is on my team, and he’s a lot better at math than me, so usually I’ll see if he thinks he knows it, and, if he does, maybe he’ll buzz in before me.”
Even though they have team members with varied strengths, they all still practice on different subjects in order to be better prepared for competitions.
“We practice Friday mornings before school for about half an hour,” senior AJ Arensberg said. “Whoever shows up, shows up, and we just kind of plug in the machines, and Ms. Freeman reads off practice questions.”
Integrating consistent and regular practices has helped English teacher and first-time quiz bowl coach Nealy Freeman rebuild the quiz bowl program. This helped the team when it came to the five meets they participated in—one being conference—which was hosted at Yutan for the first time.
“I have so little experience with hosting events and building brackets,” Freeman said. “It was really stressful, and there were probably 50 people to take care of and make sure they knew where they were going.”
Despite it being the first time hosting, the event went well and was a memorable experience for everyone.
“It actually ran very smoothly, and the tournament went great,” Freeman said. “[The] food was great, and the kids had fun.”
To add to the fun, a group of students even came to support Yutan’s team.
“At conference, we had a big student section watch, and they were really obnoxious, which was pretty funny,” Honke said.
The student section helped the team achieve third at conference despite the tough competition.
“I would say a lot of the kids that you go up against from other schools are pretty smart and they kind of do stuff like quiz bowl,” Arensberg said.
Even with the difficulties, the team is looking to use the momentum from this year to perform even better next year.
“We can definitely get better,” sophomore Lincoln Hoffart said. “I feel like next year we’re going to have a really good team.”
