The quiz league team returned to Mt. Pleasant for round two of the trivia tournament. Going back a second time, the team learned valuable lessons and will continue to apply them in the future.
Autumn Blozowich, a varsity team member, deals with the pressure during the games. “Going against teams like Greensburg Salem, we try just to stay calm and focus on what the question is asking instead of getting caught up in keywords,” Blozowich said. Sometimes a topic or something mentioned in the question stands out and the participant can get ahead of herself and ultimately misinterpret what the question is asking. She says, “It might lead us to think differently.”
When asked about preparation, her current schedule is busy and it is hard to balance trying to prepare with one another for the event. “Most of us have pretty busy schedules during the school year, so a lot of our preparation happens on the bus ride to the event. We pull up previous years’ trivia packets and we go through some of those questions,” she said. This method is effective because it gets the minds working before the real questions in gameplay. Although it would be ideal to have a scheduled time to practice in the future, for now, that strategy is working. It helps expose us to possible subject matters we may encounter.
Ryanne Lehman, another varsity member, shared her input on the team’s comradery. “We should consider playing it safe and waiting until the question is done being read to answer.” This ensures that what is fully being asked is understood and if the team has an incorrect answer, the opposing team can only receive half credit for a correct answer. She explained, for example, “When the question is asking for a shape, sometimes we do not answer a shape.”
Regarding the results of the second round-robin on October 24, Blozowich was the team’s biggest scorer with eight correct answers. Three of these were chemistry-based and one was even giving the correct spelling of “ukulele.”
The bracket tournament will take place on November 14. The GLSH team hopes to prepare better and advance further in the competition than in the past. Success will require quick thinking, patience, and problem-solving.
Overall, Quiz League is a great way to stay involved and give the past GOAL students a chance to get together again and participate in the fun extracurriculars they used to do. Since these students have done trivia events since elementary school, great memories and strategies have been crafted. No matter the outcome, throughout this experience, many interesting facts are learned. Questions seem impossible to answer, but someone always knows it. It is interesting to see how knowledgeable some of these GOAL students are. Maybe some will be on Jeopardy in the future.
