Five seconds is the average time it takes scholastic bowl students to answer a trivia question. The varsity Scholastic Bowl team will use their fast reflexes tomorrow, February 1 to compete in their conference tournament. 

The Varsity Scholastic Bowl team will attend a trivial competition that tests players on a wide variety of academic subjects, on February 1st at Stevenson High School. As the final competition of the year, the North Suburban Conference will consist of up to fifteen different schools, each hoping to advance on to regionals, the next tier of competition.

“All of us [the members of the team] do have our strengths and weaknesses, but overall we are very well-rounded, and it make us a stronger team,” Amy Cooper, senior and Varsity Scholastic Bowl student, said. “We’ve been doing pretty well this season and we’ve only lost twice. We’ve beaten a lot of pretty strong teams.”

According to Cooper, the team hopes to continue to keep doing well in the head-to-head competition that pits two teams against each other to answer trivia questions and earn points in any field, from pop culture to chemistry .

“Our team’s well-roundedness helps us to not drop any questions because we rarely see a category where we don’t know anything, so we lose fewer points and gain more,” Payton Gagliardi, senior and Varsity Scholastic Bowl student, said.

In addition to the intellectual skill sets that the Scholastic Bowl athletes already possess, the team holds practices twice a week to expand their range of knowledge. Hence why it is valuable, according to Gagliardi, to have teammates who are knowledgeable in a wide varieties of topics.

“They do scrimmages and try to get through as many questions of a wide variety as possible,” Donald Castans, Varsity Scholastic Bowl coach, said, “Having them hear so many [different kinds] of questions and putting them in the bank helps to prepare.”

The team’s practices have helped them prepare for their upcoming competition, according to Gagliardi, especially in subjects such as literature, mythology, and art. This year, Castans says that the team will be a huge contender in placing for their conference tournament.

“We lost to the same two teams last year, so I’m really hoping that we can beat Lake Forest at the very least,” Cooper said, “Stevenson is a bit of a tougher team, but Lake Forest I definitely think we have a chance against.”

Ultimately, the main goal of the team, according to Castans, is to enjoy the teamwork and competitive spirit of a larger-scale tournament such as conference, whether or not the team wins.