Not One Championship, but Two

On April 29-30th, the Fair Grove Scholar Bowl team headed to Nationals in Chicago and took home the win. The following weekend of May 6 the Scholar Bowl team took the State title.

Senior Braden Booth has made a major impact on the scholar bowl team. Booth and the team spent many long hours practicing for Nationals, “The prep for nationals was really intense. Every day after school we practiced for two hours, and we often had extra practices at night. Personally, I reached the point where I was studying 5-6 hours a day in order to be ready,” explained Booth.

Scholar Bowl sponsor Michelle Wahlquist has also put in countless hours to this team. She explained the special senior season these students have got to experience, “The seniors this year met every goal they set for themselves and for the team. I got to watch them accomplish something nobody else has done.”

Booth talked about the experience of winning the state title, “It was amazing. The craziest part was to hear teams we’ve been scared of, teams that used to beat us, and to hear them called before us. It was really cool to see all of our hard work pay off.”

After this year, both Booth and fellow senior Christian Allen will be attending Universities to continue their scholar bowl journey. Booth will be attending Mizzou, while Allen will be going to Missouri S&T. “I am very excited. I’ve already started practicing with some of the players from Mizzou, and they’ve already signed me up for a couple of tournaments. It will be quite a bit different playing in college, but I hope by the end of the summer I am ready to be a competitive player at this new level,” expressed Booth. 

With Booth and Allen’s high school career ending, Booth remembered his favorite memories from the scholar bowl team, “I think my favorite memory was halftime of the National Championship game. They had the score on a big screen and we were up 430 to negative ten. There were over a hundred people in the room, and it was an amazing feeling to know that we had basically clinched a national title, and that it wasn’t even close.”

Wahlquist has high hopes as well for next year, “I’m hoping that they can meet the goals that we set as well. They’ve had fantastic role models and have learned how to study and perform well under pressure, so I’m excited to see these players come into their own.”