MHS Knowledge Bowl: Not a trivial activity

Knowledge Bowl is a competitive high school activity in a few states across the country. Teams go through a written round of grueling multiple choice questions, then face three rounds of oral questions against two other teams. The first team to buzz in and say the correct answer wins a point. At the end of a competition, the team with the most overall correct responses wins.

“Every competition we go into, I feel that we are ready, and we prepare well,” Sam Pickering said. He went on to admit that “it’s always a little nerve wracking.” This is a feeling that most other competitors experience. There is no knowing what questions are going to come up, so knowledge bowlers have to be ready for anything that comes their way. Also the competition setting adds to that.

Questions about who wrote The Great Gatsby; what famous sea captain died in Hawaii, or what battle ended Napoleon’s reign in France are a few of the thousands related to subjects that must be known in order to be successful. Mr. Giesen, the knowledge bowl advisor, said, “It feels like family.” This combined with their experience and effective studying made the team successful this year.

Where most schools have 3 to 8 teams at their school, Mayo High School has one team, but in this case it is easy to say that the focus is on quality over quantity. At the First invitational meet, Mayo took second place, losing by only two points to Kasson-Mantorville-1. At the second and final invitational meet, Mayo won, beating out 21 other teams from 5 different schools.

In Mayo’s win at the second round robin invitational, they were extremely consistent in their scoring which led them to victory. After the first two rounds, Kingsland-4 had 64 points, while Mayo only had 58. However, Mayo scored 14 points in both rounds three and four, and Kingsland had 17 total in those two rounds which allowed Mayo to win the invitational meet.

At the Sub-regional meet, Mayo cruised to victory, never losing the lead, and winning by a whopping 33.5 points. The team easily qualified for the regional meet where 3 of 12 teams would advance to the state competition. Unfortunately Mayo took 4th place at regionals, missing state by one spot. They played extremely well, and it was an unfortunate loss. The team was disappointed but still proud of how far they went.