The Fair Grove High School Scholar Bowl started off their season with a second place finish at the university of Rolla S&T competition on October 25th. By placing second, the team qualified for the PACE national tournament in Chicago.
The scholar bowl team’s head coach is Michelle Wahlquist, retired high school English teacher. Wahlquist has been coaching scholar bowl for 10 years. The assistant coach is Katy Brandes. She has been assisting the high school scholar bowl for 2 years. Brandes is also the middle school scholar bowl head coach.
Wahlquist stated, “Scholar bowl is a competitive activity demonstrating academic strength, testing students’ knowledge on academic subjects. Teams use buzzers to ring in first and answer questions.” Wahlquist added, “There are toss-up questions for individuals and if a player answers correctly, there are bonus questions that team’s players can collaborate on and answer for additional points. The winning team is the one with the highest score after the second half of play.”
Wahlquist mentioned that the scholar bowl has practices every Wednesday and Friday after school in the library computer lab. All of the tournaments they attend usually include 10-12 matches. They play all sizes of schools. Wahlquist says it’s exciting to beat schools that are bigger and have more resources.
According to Wahlquist, the team’s star member for the year is Aidyn Owings (12). At their first competition he placed first overall individually with a large point difference from first to second place. Owings stated, “I am a little sad for sure about graduating but I’m hoping to start a team at OTC and MSU when I go there. However I do plan to go out with a bang in my last season of high school scholar bowl. I look forward to seeing how the team does after I graduate.”
Arron Batson (9) said the person he looks up to on the team is Owings. He commented, “He is super smart, he contributes the most to the team.”
Wahlquist said that their goal for the year is to make a state title, qualify for nationals, and build their performance up each year by answering questions quicker and learning more. Aubrey Johnson (10) added that her goal for the year was to challenge her and her team to answer harder questions.
Wahlquist said, “I love being around students who have a love for learning and knowledge. They are competitive and talented and we have fun because they are witty. I enjoy seeing the growth of the students throughout the years on the team.”
The Fair Grove high school scholar bowl’s next competition will take place on November 22nd in Columbia.
