Junior Kyle Stutzman presses a buzzer for Scholar’s Bowl. Their record is two third place wins, three second place wins, and three first place wins to show for it.

Photo illustration by Alaina Cunningham.

Palms sweat, lips lift into confident smiles and hands dash toward the buzzers as soon as the moderator has finished asking their latest question. A Maize student gets to the buzzer the fastest and attempts to answer. They are correct, and Maize High wins the tournament. This scene plays itself on loop during the many Scholar’s Bowl tournaments of this year, with a varsity record of two third place wins, three second place wins, and three first place wins to show for it. The varsity team has managed to place in all eight tournaments, and has qualified for state. State is taking place Saturday at Lansing High School, just outside of Kansas City. The members attending this year include seniors Scott Hershberger, Emily Beaver, Nick Springer, and juniors John Kohl and Kyle Stutzman.

“It’s an academic team buzzer-based competition where we compete against teams from other schools,” said Hershberger. “The questions are about all academic subjects. There’s foreign language, language arts, social science, science, math, fine arts, and current events. A key part of the competition is acting quickly, thinking quickly, and buzzing in fast to answer the questions.”

Beaver said Scholar’s Bowl is like Jeopardy on steroids.

Stutzman said the team started training early in the year and meets two times a week in order to prepare for the event. They do this by practicing with buzzers and questions from previous rounds written in advance, Jeopardy-style. Questions cover a wide range of topics and test every aspect of knowledge the high school students possess.

“I compete because I like to challenge myself and see how much I know, because school isn’t the most important thing to me, so being able to see how much I can apply to questions being thrown at me is kind of fun,” Beaver said.