The academic challenge bowl season has jut begun and then high school teams otherwise known as Masterminds are off to a great start winning almost every game they play. They hosted a home match and traveled to Mayfield. The Junior challenge bowl is starting this Thursday on January 9th at Johnstown with its 7th and 8th grade members being coached by 7th grade math teacher Mrs. Silsby. 

The academic challenge bowl is a trivia based competition where teams compete by answering questions that are completely random. When your team gets a toss up (aka  question posed by the moderator) correct, your team then gets 3 more questions based on the same subject. One example is what country Hong Kong is in. If you get that correct, then you would get 3 more questions on a related topic like what year did ww1 start, what country attacked Bulgaria and who immediately came to Bulgaria’s defense.

The best part though in my opinion is when you get a question right and other people on your team have the answers to the follow-up questions. The worst part of the competition is when you know an answer but the other team gets it first. This happened to me when there was a question about the 1927 Yankees otherwise known as Murderers Row and they asked the question in a weird way so I thought they wanted me to name a player other than Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth, the two stars of the team. I felt terrible because that night I was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt. I was playing because they had an extra spot and I was there but it was an amazing experience and I hope our season starts soon.  I didn’t feel too terrible though because the last time I had gotten a difficult question about the Killers Of The Flower Moon Book about the beginning of the FBI and the Osage murders.

In all the Academic Challenge Bowl is a great program and I urge anyone interested to join.