The Fair Grove Scholar Bowl Team ended their 2025-2026 season top eight in the overall class four team division in Missouri.
Scholar bowl coach Michelle Wahlquist explained, “This was another amazing season for the Scholar Bowl team. We finished the season with a 77-28 win-loss record.” This season’s scholar bowl team consisted of Aidyn Owings (12), Madison Crews (11), Chase Hale (11), Audrey Johnson (10), and Aaron Batson (9).
The team has had a long season full of competition. Batson stated, “We play like five to ten matches or more during one tournament. There have been lots of tournaments throughout the year, but we’re almost done now. We’ve been to eleven tournaments in total over this year.”
After beating Houston High School on April 18th the Fair Grove team took the class four district title. Following this, the team traveled to Chicago for the Small Schools National Tournament.
At the Small Schools National Tournament they competed against 88 other high schools and placed 21st. Wahlquist stated, “We had a great performance Saturday in the preliminary rounds finishing with an eight to two win-loss record against some very talented teams from around the country. While in Chicago, we also visited the National Art Museum and Millennial Park.”
At each tournament question sets vary in difficulty. Owings explained, “Generally tournaments don’t use hard question sets until later in the season. We did play some harder questions early in the second semester but the questions we had from March to now weren’t very hard.”
The team has multiple achievements from this year. Wahlquist stated, “Besides the huge National tournament, Fair Grove Scholar Bowl won four of its tournaments this year, placed second in two of them, third in another and never finished lower than tenth in any of the tournaments that we participated in, and we play in large tournaments against very strong teams from large, both public and private schools.”
Apart from the team’s achievements, multiple individuals had very successful seasons. Owings finished all tournaments in the top five individual performances. Seven of those top five finishes were first place finishes.
At small school nationals out of 515 competitors Owings placed fifth individually, qualifying him for the all-star team, and Batson placed 278th. Batson noted, “Competing in nationals is an honor, I may be a freshman but I try my hardest to be better and push myself. Aidyn placed fifth among the best of the best in the nation for public schools and I got 278th.”
The Fair Grove High School Scholar Bowl Team ended their season in the quarterfinal round of state. Owing said, “This season ultimately wasn’t too bad. We didn’t do great at every tournament but we were never in the bottom bracket. Wahlquist has been a good coach since way back when. Her coaching combined with our current players and the incoming freshmen could make for a pretty good team. I’m excited to see how they do next year.”
