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Photo by and used with the permission of Laura Harvey

On February 9, the club competed in the Conference tournament placing fourth out of the eight teams in their bracket.

How should a scholastic team answer a pandemic that shut down many after school activities? A) Give up, B) Wait till next year, or C) Adapt to their circumstances and move forward. If you answered C), then you would have described how the Lake Zurich Scholastic Bowl club overcame COVID-19.

“How we competed and practiced was [really] difficult,” Nikko Gajowniczek, senior co-captain of the club, said. “It was almost like [no one] was on the team… so it was much harder to practice.”

Last year during the onset of the pandemic, the club was forced to make multiple changes to their usual operations. Such changes include moving all practices online, adapting practice methods to account for a decrease in members, allowing only two schools to compete during Zoom meets, and more. All together, these alterations to their routine had a significant impact on the team members. 

“Everything was on zoom, so it was very different,” Gajowniczek said. “In years prior we would practice with teams of 5 to emulate real matches. But last year we had less people on the team, so during practices instead of having a team, we would do one-on-one’s which were free-for-all.”

However, Scholastic Bowl members were able to find a silver lining despite all of the changes. The club adapted to a tri-meet system, where three schools compete against each other, in multiple rounds. Although this was foreign to the team, it taught them how to evolve to a difficult situation.

Laura Harvey, math teacher and the club’s varsity coach, says that she and the team “prefer the way the system is now, [and we’re] hoping it will stay. It has taught us that we are adaptable!”

As for now, adjustments and regulations continue to be made, such as enforcing mask-wearing and  following COVID protocol to allow in person meets. Overall, according to Gajowniczek, things seem to be returning to “normal”. 

“We actually have competitions in person, so it goes much more smoothly,” Gajowniczek said. “In our circuit, we play every school and sometimes we travel to them, and sometimes they travel to us. That kind of sets up our placements too for competitions like regionals, sectionals, etc.”

The club began competing at the end of October, and has around two meets a month, up until regionals, which is during the first week of March. During the meets, students compete in a quiz-based competition that tests students on a wide variety of academic subjects (such as sports, math, art, and literature). So far, the club has 8 wins and 6 losses.

Harvey has coached this team for the past four years, throughout the pandemic, to see through these wins and losses. At the end of the day, she enjoys that scholastic bowl allows her to, “[get] to know the students – some I get to see all four years. I also enjoy the way the students come together and build relationships.”

The club is a good way for students to learn new things about different topics, according to Gajowniczek. “Even if you don’t think you’re smart, there’s a lot that you do know and it just depends on the topic. There’s a lot of different questions so you can be surprised how much anyone knows about a topic.”