Quiz Bowl Wins Districts

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Courtesy of Mr. Salen

Quiz Bowl team posing with the scores after becoming Schuylkill Academic League Champions.

Bryce Delp, Staffer

“One of my siblings joined it and she said that I would really enjoy the program,” says Senior David Krammes, “I joined it when I was a freshman 4 years ago.” Pine Grove’s Academic Bowl, or “Quiz Bowl,” team is a group of students led by Mr. Salen that compete against other schools by answering a wide variety of trivia questions. They mainly compete against other schools in the Schuylkill Academic League, though they will occasionally go outside the league to play against other schools. At the end of the season, the top schools from all the leagues in Pennsylvania compete in the Pennsylvania Academic Competition in the State Capitol Building.

On February 5th, Pine Grove’s Quiz Bowl team secures their title as the Schuylkill Academic League champions. Pine Grove beat Shenandoah Valley, Nativity, and North Schuylkill, finishing with the highest amount of points out of all schools competing in the league. During the 2017-2018 season, they ranked first place in the Schuylkill Academic League and seventeenth place in the Pennsylvania Academic Competition.

“It’s very simple, we ask you questions and then you answer the questions. It’s a guessing game. Sometimes you guess right, sometimes you guess wrong,” says Krammes. Members of the Quiz Bowl team practice after school by playing matches amongst themselves. Whenever a question is asked that a student may not know, it is an opportunity to learn the answer for upcoming competitions. Some students use methods such as flash cards to memorize the trivia questions themselves, while some prefer to simply absorb as much knowledge as they can and use it to answer questions as they come up.