Scholastic Bowl recently took home a decisive victory over Fenton High School, and played exceptionally well during a home meet against Glenbard East and Glenbard South on January 31.

Scholastic Bowl is an academic competition where students compete to answer trivia questions in subjects such as history, math, literature, among others. The group typically meets twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Students practice their trivia knowledge via online study guides and through regular classwork. A significant portion of the questions are typically pooled from courses the students are enrolled in, however, members are generally encouraged to explore topics themselves.

“Scholastic Bowl, by nature, kind of forces you to find new information about the things you’re gonna try to answer questions about, one example of that would be going on to the NAQT website and researching literature, or physics, or any other field that you might get asked about,” said senior T.J. Tipton, one of the team’s Varsity co-captains.

The team is currently bursting with confidence as they prepare to move deeper into the season. They regularly hold full-scale practice matches to continue sharpening their knowledge and to familiarize themselves with the layout of the questions.

“I think it’s a nice way to ramp up into the season, especially because the Fenton match was not close at all, so we kinda [have] a linear acceleration in difficulty,” said senior Cameron Petrie, the other co-captain.

Social Studies teacher Nick Caltagirone has been the team’s coach for quite some time; he works diligently to ensure that his team is always tournament ready and can compete with some of the best trivia teams in the region. His deep interests in history and literature fuels the team’s effort as he takes on a mentoring position for the group.

“I hope that all the students have a positive experience and that we have competitive matches,” said Caltagirone.