Courtesy of Ananda Ambal

Huddled in senior Brinda Ambal’s living room, the Scholar Bowl team members write questions to read at their trivia night. Students drew out random answer lines from a hat and wrote trivia questions around them in three groups. “The hardest thing was rallying the troops because we’ve never done a big event like this before. It took a little bit of convincing,” Ambal said.

Between grueling Russian Twists, Twilight pizza parties and field trips, Scholar Bowl members developed their friendships and skills. The only thing standing between them and nationals this June is $3,000.

The team set its sights on going to the national championship in Chicago. However, because the activities office does not cover travel costs for national competitions, most trip money has to come directly from the team. While they have been pursuing fundraising avenues, such as working concessions during basketball games and wrestling matches, the team still has yet to reach its goal. To help fund their trip, they are hosting a virtual trivia night with prizes March 12.

“We were trying to think of different ways to fundraise for our trip to nationals. We chose a trivia night because the Scholar Bowl program is not very extensive. All the people we have are dedicated—we just don’t have that many bodies to market an event. A trivia night is an easy way to play into our strengths by writing questions,” senior Brinda Ambal said.

Ambal is Scholar Bowl’s community liaison and she is in charge of organizing meetings outside of school. Over the summer, the team visited the art museum and viewed pieces like Eero Saarinen’s Tulip Chair to learn more about fine arts. Recently, she hosted a pizza party and movie night for the team to write questions in anticipation of trivia night. The team wrote an entire trivia packet with original questions for anyone attending the fundraiser.

“A couple years ago, the team had just graduated some seniors other had quit so we were newer, and no one who starts Scholar Bowl already knows everything. [So,] everyone was in the same boat of learning as much as they [could] and learning for fun,” Ambal said. “Now, we’ve started doing more team bonding and more community activities like fundraisers. Having fundraisers makes people have Scholar Bowl as a priority rather than just something they do on the side.”

The Scholar Bowl members plan to have team rounds for the trivia night where competitors can sign up with a team of their choice or be assigned randomly. There will also be individual standings, with the top four individuals winning prizes to pick up from school the following day. To stay COVID-19 safe, math teacher and Scholar Bowl coach Patrick Troy will be hosting the event over his Zoom. 

“We wanted to be able to get everyone together, even if they couldn’t be physically in the same place. Everyone should check out trivia night because I think it’s gonna be a good time. I also hope that we can use this as a fundraising opportunity because our kids have high hopes for going to nationals this year, and I like it when kids have fun going to tournaments and making new friends,” Troy said.

Students will read questions from 10 unique categories during the event, such as St. Louis, music and movies. Armed with her knowledge from van life Youtube videos, Ambal also wrote several travel-inspired questions about national parks. However, writing questions was just one part of planning such a big event.

“One of the most difficult parts was figuring out when we would have [trivia night]. A lot of the seniors are doing all their college applications around this time and we also have spring break and different holidays, so we faced a lot of hard setbacks. But Scholar Bowl helps alleviate a lot of the stress,” senior and Scholar Bowl strategic captain Anna Csiki-Fejer said.

Along with executive captain junior Owen Arneson, Csiki-Fejer has been spread the word about the event and created flyers.

“I think people should go [to trivia night] even if they don’t have any formal experience in quiz bowl or even in trivia. The ability to learn something new isn’t restricted to a club or grade that you’re in. It’s meant to challenge you, and it’s meant to help you learn new things,” Csiki-Fejer said.

Csiki-Fejer introduces new members to Scholar Bowl and encourages them to find their trivia specialty. Then, she meets with her teammates and helps them explore categories they are interested in. On the side, Arneson, Ambal and Csiki-Fejer organize workout bowls — a fun pre-tournament tradition where team members answer trivia at the risk of having to engage in physical activity like pushups and curl-ups. 

“Workout bowl is just a different and fun way for us to practice,” Arneson said.

Although having a knowledgeable team is crucial to Scholar Bowl, Ambal credits much of her team’s success to their strong friendships and bonds.

“There are a lot of teams who might not have as good of team chemistry. They might start talking over each other and lose time on team bonus parts, and they might get timed out of the right answer. [So] I’m glad that’s not really an issue that we have, we work together well, and we enjoy playing the game with each other,” Ambal said.

The team has shown its chemistry and mastery with recent first-place wins at the 2022 Patriot Academic and North Point Grizzy Scholars tournaments. However, Troy believes that there is more to Scholar Bowl than winning. 

“When I got to West, some kids wanted to start a team but they didn’t have a sponsor. I started doing it and I caught the bug. At the beginning of the pandemic, when we started having practices over Google meet, that helped me have something to look forward to because that was a hard time for everyone,” Troy said. “My goal is for us to help kids find a place where they can have fun and compete academically. Winning tournaments is fine, but I am more interested in the kids getting something meaningful out of it.”

You can support the Scholar Bowl team by purchasing tickets here. The deadline to purchase tickets and sign up with a team is Thursday March 10 at 11:59 pm.