The Scholar Bowl team has started the year with another season and are making strides towards preparing for districts later in the year. The varsity team includes senior Elizabeth Carroll, senior Jaron Ma, senior Andrew George, junior JD Lister and sophomore Amos Chen.

During a competition, the team received questions from different topics, using buzzers, like in Jeopardy, to give their answers to those questions.

“The questions are triangular, meaning they start out very specific but then get easier and more general as the round goes on,” Lister said. “You have an advantage if you know a subject well.”

The questions range from any topic, including academic subjects like history, english or math, plus other topics like pop culture. In a competition, the team competes through eight to 10 rounds, with about 30 or 40 questions per round.

For being such a young team, club sponsors and english teachers Erin Fluchel and Shannan Creemens are impressed with how well the team is doing.

“We are still working on getting ready for nationals, but for only being six years old, the team has overall done very well,” Fluchel said.

Last year, the team placed second in districts. Two years ago, they placed first in districts, first in sectionals, and fourth in state, plus making it to the national competition for the past two years.

“After getting fourth in state two years ago, we have aspirations to do as well or better,” Carroll said.

The team competed in the Parkway Quad last Thursday, with the junior varsity winning both matches and the varsity team winning one. Fluchel believes a sense of camaraderie is what sets this team apart from others.

“A lot of teams take these competitions so seriously. We take it seriously, but we are able to have fun, too.”