The TV game show Jeopardy! just crowned its all-time champion, but closer to home, some Republic students are taking their own quiz careers seriously. The 2019-20 Republic High School Scholar Bowl team had competed in four tournaments through the middle of January. About a dozen students are part of the team, with four competing at each event on the varsity level and four at the junior varsity level.
“We run through a variety of former tournament questions, as well as practice questions we have purchased. We attempt to specialize in areas, so certain students can make the best educated guesses in the different categories,” said head coach Kristin Howard.
Cymoril Conry is the varsity captain. “I became involved in the team after it was recommended to me by my English teacher, Lisa Deckard,” Conry said. “I went to my first practice and knew that I was meant to be on the Scholar Bowl team.”
Conry said she most enjoys being able to use her “useless knowledge” to help the team. “Everyone picks up trivia, whether they want to or not, I happen to have more trivia memorized than the average person.”
And beyond the competition, Conry said she enjoys the tournament atmosphere, which is friendly despite the competitive nature of the event.
“Scholar Bowl is a great community. There is no animosity between the teams – it’s literally just a bunch of nerds getting together to show off their knowledge of trivia,” she said.
The tournament format has changed from recent years, with 13 questions per round and three bonus questions after each primary one. Conry said the new format is intended to promote faster game play, and it does, but she suspects that’s because “the references have somehow become more obscure. I think that question writers have been taking advantage of the shorter playtime to make the clues harder than they already were.”
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