On April 25 and 26 the Parker Scholastic Bowl team competed in the Small School National Championship Tournament. The A Team, made up of seniors Chase Wayland, Nash Oliphant, Spencer Koh, Daniel Chang and junior Jack Bartlett, placed 17th out of 66. The B Team, made up of seniors Dhruv Moorthy and Darius Cleaver, junior Sam Goldblatt, and freshman Theo Hirsch placed 51st out of 66. The A Team will be competing next in the High School National Championship Tournament in Atlanta from May 22 to 24.
In order to prepare for competitions, the full team attends practices where they answer example questions to get used to the competition format. In terms of learning the material, players are often picking up information without even realizing it.
“For me personally, the process of training and preparing for competition mostly revolves around what I pick up in my day-to-day life as well as what I learn at our practices. I think some people don’t really understand how much they learn in a day,” Hirsch said. The players memory of school material and drive to learn outside of school hours both help them in competition. “They are answering tossups because of a news story they remember reading or something they learned in Ms. Elliott’s history class three years ago, or some Wikipedia rabbit hole they went down because they just had to know everything about it,” Upper School math teacher and Scholastic Bowl coach Ethan Levine said.
Oftentimes, players will have “specialties” or specific topics they are experts in and enjoy learning about the most. For example, Bartlett is a generalist, meaning he is well-versed in all topics but with a specific focus on science and history. Hirsch’s speciality is Greek mythology, and Cleaver’s is geography and sports.
This year, the team shifted their mindset to balance fun and success and not put too much pressure on winning.“The highlight for me this year was just seeing how much fun our players had competing as a team. They went in with a competitor’s mentality but also determined to enjoy the experience,” Levine said. This strategy paid off for both the A and B Teams. The B Team played against the current national champions and each player on the team was able to correctly answer a tossup, meaning a question was asked to both teams and they buzzed in first with the correct answer.
The A Team qualified for playoffs for the sixth year in a row and faced some of the top national teams. They made it to semi-finals on the competition’s second day, finishing one level higher than they had the previous year. “On the second day we lost our strongest player Chase, so we were saying, you know what, it’s just for fun. Because we were joking around and we were so relaxed about it, we ended up not getting in our heads and still doing well,” Oliphant said. Being able to laugh with teammates helps the team be so successful throughout competitions. “I think the key contributor to our repeated success in tournaments, year after year, is the chemistry we have with one another. Coming from a school as small as Parker, we are all comfortable and familiar with each of our teammates,” Cleaver said.
Being able to have fun with friends while also learning is many players’ favorite part of being in Scholastic Bowl. “My favorite part, although it sounds nerdy, is learning about topics that we, unfortunately, don’t have time to cover in detail in school,” Cleaver said. Being able to then utilize information and expertise in competition is a very rewarding experience. “It’s fun when you have a really niche interest, and you can just make use of that knowledge,” Oliphant said. “It’s also just fun to be around friends on the team. We are always laughing during the tournaments and goofing off a little bit.” Through Scholastic Bowl not only can students win titles they can find community with like-minded people. “Bonding with others over shared knowledge can be incredibly powerful, and this activity has truly brought together lots of Parker students over the years,” Levine said.
