Knoch trivia team made up of the most ‘curious learners’
JEFFERSON TWP — After several Knoch High School students competed in the Academic Games national tournament in April, some members of the team continued studying, preparing their minds to compete in another scholastic-based tournament happening in May.
Those nine students are described by the Knoch Academic Team adviser Casey Sandorf as the most curious learners at the school — the ones who enjoy competition and putting their knowledge to the test.
“These are the kids that any time I'm like, 'Do you guys want to try this?' They're like, 'Yeah, let's go,’” Sandorf, who is also a ninth-grade teacher at Knoch High School, said. “They're just curious learners who like to have fun.”
Two Knoch trivia teams — one made up of five students, the other four — will compete in the Northeast division of the Long Island Quiz Bowl Alliance May 30 and 31, in Madison, N.J. Quizbowl is a knowledge-based buzzer game played between two teams requiring skill in various different fields, with a diverse knowledge of topics being the most important, according to the organization.
To qualify for the Northeast division championships, Knoch’s trivia team competed in a virtual competition in December, where it made it to the top 20% of 360 teams. Sandorf said the students in the group were gung-ho about competing in the championships, even though they would have to be out of town for a weekend at the end of May.
On Wednesday, May 20, the team got together during a lunch period, the normal time for practice, to once again go through sample trivia questions. One of the members of the team, senior Remmy Kovac, said the practice questions may be similar to questions asked at an actual competition and Quiz Bowl sends them out so teams can get a feel for the game and its categories.
The team gets a new batch of questions every week and the members go over them during lunch periods.
“It's a really long list of questions and it's a lot to memorize,” Remmy said, “but it's just to prepare us because we don't know what exactly they're going to throw at us.”
“The Holy Roman Empire,” “Dylan Thomas” and “Ontario,” were all answers to questions the students took on Wednesday.
The questions are not separated into categories, meaning any subject can come up at any time during a round.
Geoffrey Fair, a sophomore and member of the team, said the competition does start out with current events as a category before going into “generalized tossups” in topics like history, geography and more.
Sandorf explained there are four quarters to competition games, the first three of which are “buzzer,” meaning the first team to buzz in has the chance to answer for points.
One part of a competition gives teams three chances to answer a question, but they get 30 points for answering on the first clue, 20 for answering on the second clue and 10 if it takes them until the third clue to answer.
Some of the questions Sandorf asked from the list Wednesday were head-scratchers. The students said they know the answers to some of the quiz questions just based on what they have learned in their regular classes, but the spread of topics means some answers are found outside the classroom.
Geoffrey explained the benefit of team trivia play is that one person may know more about a certain topic, so everyone can contribute if a question comes up they know. He added the practice questions help the team get a grip on the way questions are rolled out at a competition.
“They're not the exact questions, but they just give you an idea of how the questions are worded,” Geoffrey said.
Sandorf said this is the first time Knoch’s trivia team will compete in an out-of-state competition, but the team is only three years old. Some of the older members of the current team were there when the team began and Sandorf credited a few in the room Wednesday with kick starting a trivia group at Knoch.
Sandorf said the members of the team are just excited to try their hand against out-of-state teams.
“Even if we don't have the most amount of training or the most amount of study time... we still go and do our best,” Sandorf said.
There will be 29 teams competing in the Northeast division this weekend. Sandorf said the tournament comes down to a single-elimination bracket, where two teams compete against one another to move on to the final round. This means the two Knoch teams will actually be rivals at the tournament and could potentially face one another in a game if they land on the same leg of the bracket.
Maggie Powell, president of the trivia team, said its members all work together to gain and retain knowledge that can help them at a competition.
Sarah Edder, a senior and member of the trivia team, said she is excited to compete in a high-level tournament, especially after not making the bracket last year.
“It was really fun, so I think we just decided, why not do it again?” she said about the previous academic year’s trivia team run.
Remmy also said getting to compete will be a fun challenge and the members of the team don’t mind missing lunch in the cafeteria.
“You're doing it for fun and we're all nerds. I think it's fun,” Remmy said. “I'm most nervous about not getting a lot of sleep, but it's what we do.”
