Scholars Bowl is a team of about 24-35 people split between JV and Varsity who compete in multiple rounds with the goal to answer questions faster than their opponents. It’s like jeopardy, but with a lot more people answering questions at once. The coaches who run Scholars Bowl are Deb Osborn, and Julie Gillette.
“Scholars Bowl is like academic jeopardy, except you play on a team, we have teams of 5 going up against one other school, and it’s a round of 16 questions,” Gillette said. “They’re academic and nature, so you’ll have like 3 in math, 3 in science, 4 in language, that kind of thing.”
GEHS’s scholars bowl team started in the late 90’s. If you want to join the scholars bowl team the only thing that is needed is to take an interest in learning and having some knowledge about core subjects, and have some general knowledge about fun facts, like pop culture questions for example. Anyone Freshman through seniors are able to join the team. This sport encourages people to get as competitive as possible with the knowledge they possess.
“Generally you play 10 rounds at a tournament,” Gillette said. “[There are] at least 10 teams, but there could be up to 30 teams, you could be in pool play. We do it in the evenings. Generally they start at 4 [pm], [and] they’re over by 6:30 [pm].”
The scholars bowl team has a pretty flexible practice schedule, but they try their best to get at least one to two practices in per week after school in Osborn’s room while they are in season. The season lasts from the beginning of October and ends in the first week of February with JV and Varsity getting in two or three tournaments per week.
“We do a [home] JV tournament every year, and everybody works the tournament,” Gillette said. “We have regionals the week after that, and that ends our season.”
Regionals are held February 1 every year to end the Scholars Bowl’s season off. Every sport has JV and Varsity split up in a certain way, but the one thing they have in common is if there is a freshman or sophomore who is very good and bright, they may put them on the varsity team.
“JV is usually freshman and sophomores, occasionally a junior that hasn’t played before, and Varsity can be any level, any grade level, but most [of] the time it’s upperclassmen, it’s juniors and seniors, but sometimes there will be a really bright freshman that will play varsity, or sophomores that will settle in,” Osborn said.
One of the cool things about scholars bowl is there is not maximum amount of students who can be on Varsity or JV, but you can only go to a maximum of 9 tournaments not including regionals.
