St. Patrick Quiz Bowl Team Hitting Full Stride

The St. Patrick Quiz Bowl Team is off to a busy start to their season. The team participates in and follows the Mid-Michigan Academic League (MMAL) schedule. The team has been working extremely hard in both practice and participating in competitions recently.

Our 11-member squad has to be creative with practice times as our small student body is stretched between multiple sports teams, jobs, hobbies and other extracurricular activities. The team meets four days per week at lunch for practices, which consist mostly of keeping up to date on current events and practicing with as much trivia as possible. The league schedule has been condensed to just four weekly meets that the league attempts to sandwich between the fall and winter sports seasons. The league tournament always takes place the first Saturday after Thanksgiving break.

St. Patrick School was responsible for hosting one of the four meets this school year. We hosted teams from seven other schools. It takes much planning and volunteer assistance to be a host school. 24 volunteer readers, scorekeepers, and timekeepers are needed for the event as well as a plethora of snacks and other goodies which are necessary to fuel the young high school students’ minds and have them ready to compete. The event was a lot of fun and a huge success.

Another exciting challenge for the Quiz Bowl team was travelling to Central Michigan University on Wednesday, November 6 for our second consecutive season participating in QuizCentral, a televised trivia program produced by WCMU. We were one of 48 schools from across the State of Michigan to participate. In the first match, our team came up against a team from Cedarville who travelled from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to compete. Our team was victorious by a score of 170-120. Following a delicious lunch from the dining hall, they squared off against a tough team from McBain Northern Michigan Christian in the quarterfinals. Both teams were evenly matched, and the lead went back and forth but we were eventually defeated 200-190 (that's only 1 question) and ousted from the competition.

The 2019 St. Patrick Quiz Bowl roster is made of the following members: Varsity: Team Captain Rhiannon Pohl (Sr.), Veronica White (Sr.), Judith Pohl (Sr.), Devon FoxElster (Jr.), Letti Pohl (Jr.), and Teddy Wernet (Jr.)

JV: Cole Frazee (Jr.), Ethan Kiter (So.), Martin White (F), Mya Kahn (F), and Joshua Snitgen (F)

Our Quiz Bowl advisor is high school math teacher and trivia aficionado Mr. Terry Austen. The team’s ultimate goal is to qualify for the state meet which is hosted at Michigan State University this season. This will require the team to finish in first or second place in the league or in the league tournament. Best wishes to our Quiz Bowl team as they finish up their season in the weeks ahead.