As other sports at Pine Grove Area High School are progressing through their various seasons and continuing to play games and compete, quiz bowl, another form of competition involving the answering of academic questions as quickly as possible, is just beginning its competitive season, with its first match at Pottsville scheduled for this Tuesday, the tenth of October. While the competition against others may be just beginning, the team has been competing against itself since practices began in early September, and has steadily been improving and maintaining a healthy interest from its members since that time.
There are many reasons as to why someone would want to join quiz bowl. For Bethany Wagner, a senior who has done Quiz Bowl throughout her entire high school career, the choice was rather obvious for a special reason.
“ [I joined Quiz Bowl because of] my sister, because she was in quiz bowl my eighth-grade year, her freshman year, and she was, by that point, already on track to become captain, and I thought that that was just the coolest thing, so, even if I don’t ever get to that point, I still want to be apart of it, because it looks so much fun.”
For Abri Kutz, a freshman, who has just joined the quiz bowl program this year, her reasoning for joining quiz bowl was not more complicated than her desire to do something that she was good at and passionate about, and something that she could do with her friends.
“The biggest thing that inspired me is that I heard that it’s a lot of questions about what a lot of what people might consider to be useless knowledge, and I’m really good at collecting lots of little facts and storing them, and I also heard that a lot of my friends were in quiz bowl and people that I liked and could relate to, so that is what inspired me to join Quiz Bowl.”
There are many different variables that continue to make quiz bowl enjoyable for those who engage in it. Many enjoy the process of learning and improving as a player and contributor to the team, and others enjoy the thrill of being able to answer questions correctly and quickly in front of their peers. For Kutz, she has her own unique reasons for as to why being in quiz bowl is enjoyable for her:
“I think Quiz Bowl makes you think about a lot of things that you don’t normally think about. It gives you a lot of information that could prove to be useful. It challenges you to be confident, and to be able to be sure in your answers so that you can hit that buzzer and answer the questions.”
For some, Quiz Bowl has also offered much of an incentive for returning players to stay, with more than half of the members being those who have already been a member of the team in years previous. For Wagner, her enjoyment of quiz bowl includes both the social aspect of the program and the self-improvement that can result from being a member:
“I enjoy the social aspect of it, like the dynamic of having each other, and of course I enjoy the trivia because I wouldn’t be in if I didn’t. Honestly, once I saw that I had a bit of a talent for it, I was like, ‘Hey, why don’t I just push myself further as opposed to giving up? I like challenging myself, and Quiz Bowl, with how challenging some of the questions can get, really helps me with that.”
For those that do not have the experience of some of the program’s long-term veterans, there are many opportunities to improve one’s individual performance and ability, and many find that, even when they are outperformed by some of their more experienced peers, there are reasons to stay in quiz bowl and go through the grind of getting better. For Kutz, she states that there are many aspects of her game that she is trying to improve:
“I’d say I’m definitely still trying [to improve]. I’m not really answering many questions each practice. I’ve been trying to get better at being confident and being able to just hit that buzzer and answer, even if I don’t know if it’s right, because, at the end of the day, you need to answer something. I’m also trying to make sure that, in my free time, I am looking up and studying my topics [that I’m best at].”
Many who are a part of the quiz bowl program have stated that the program itself has had a positive impact on their high school experience. Wagner herself states that the program’s impacts on her social life and other extracurriculars have benefitted her as she has gone through high school:
“It’s totally broken me out of my shell. When I came in here as a freshman, I had a lot of difficulty making friends and all that stuff, but quiz bowl is like a very safe environment to be myself and I kind of brought that to all of my other activities.”
While Wagner emphasized the benefits that quiz bowl has had on her social life, Kutz also stated that the program had a significant academic value to her, in addition to the benefits that she has seen in her other activities in school:
“I think it impacts my academics by [helping me] with memorization and being able to know lots of things at the same time. It also helps because, if there are topics that are being covered in a class, I pay a lot closer attention to the material because I know that it could be useful in quiz bowl. I would say that it affects my extracurriculars because it challenges me to be confident and be sure in myself, and it also tells me that it is okay to be wrong, and that, especially since I’m a newbie at this, it’s okay to be a newbie at other things, too.”
As the first meet inches ever closer, many Quiz Bowl students have taken their own unique approaches to preparing for the ever-important introduction to the season. Kutz, who will be playing as a member of the JV team, has been putting in the hours in order to ensure her own success come game day:
“Personally, I have been preparing for the first meet by trying really really hard to challenge myself to be more confident, be more sure of myself, and also just really studying the topics that I picked, I have to be able to answer these questions to give us any chance.”
While new members of the team look to make a mark on the program in order to ascend up the ranks, many already established faces of the quiz bowl team are also giving their all to ensure that they can support their team in whatever way they can. For Wagner, who will not attend the first meet but who will attend subsequent ones, she has regimented her practice in such a way that will allow her to be best able to memorize the material that is most suited for quiz bowl:
“I have been studying history and world leader sets on Quizlet and have been keeping up with the news and looking at other pop culture things because of the subject category [of current events] that Salen’s doing.”
Many students make goals and other achievements to aspire to in order to motivate them to continue improving and to better themselves as the year progresses. For a new student like Kutz, the goals may be more modest and vague in nature, but they still have a lasting impact on a new recruit’s desire to continue learning and growing in the program:
“I would say that my biggest goal is that is [establishing] the confidence of being able to answer those questions and being able to hit that buzzer faster than people with my answer, and, overall, by the end of the year, I’m strong enough so that, when we a practicing, I’m more of an active member and not just sitting there and watching everyone else answering the questions.”
For a senior like Wagner, her goals are more defined and reflective of her experience in the program. She hopes to maintain her position at the very top echelon of quiz bowl competition, and is seeking to remain a very influential player on the varsity team going forward:
“Well, I have my eye on a varsity starter spot. That’s like my big goal, but my kind of lesser goal is to just be on varsity and get playing time within varsity.”