Staff writer
For 10 points, what Marion High School team returns five of six varsity players from a team that advanced to the state tournament?
Scholars’ bowl is the correct answer.
The team returns varsity players Sam Ehrlich, Patrick Hodson, E.J. Obermeyer, Derek Stuchlik, and Eric Vogel, and adds freshman Monica Spachek to the team.
Eric began competing in scholars’ bowl during middle school. The most memorable moment of his career came during the league meet when he was an eighth-grader. The team was trailing its opponent and needed to answer the final question correctly to force a tiebreaker.
The question was about ballet. The team at that tournament was composed entirely of boys, so it came as a surprise when one of his teammates answered correctly, Eric said. His teammate said he knew it because his sister was involved in ballet.
“It ended up winning us the tournament,” Eric said.
“I like the competition part,” he said. “It’s fun testing your knowledge against other people.”
Sponsor Doug Vogel had a conversation with sponsors from other schools at a meet Thursday at Flint Hills High School, in Rosalia, when someone made a point that stuck with him.
“We’re not really coaches,” Doug Vogel said Friday. “We’re facilitators.”
He said students’ teachers are the real coaches, but there is strategy involved in scholars’ bowl. Good players can read a moderator’s expressions. Sometimes a moderator seems reluctant to declare an opponent’s answer wrong, and in those situations the opponent’s answer was probably close.
Quick decision making is also important for scholars’ bowl players. Doug Vogel said he wouldn’t want the same kind of person for a physician as a scholars’ bowl player.
He would want a doctor to think through all possibilities, but scholars’ bowl players have to make split-second decisions to buzz in and answer a question.
The most difficult part of a tournament is waiting between matches, Eric said.
There was an important rule change in 2008, and another in 2009, Doug Vogel said.
Beginning in 2008, regional and state tournaments use a round-robin format for both the pool play and championship rounds. Previously the championship round was a seeded bracket. He likes the change, because a single bad match won’t end a team’s day.
The number of players a team can have in a match was increased from four to five for 2009, so a five-person team wouldn’t need to substitute someone in-between matches.
The team was short-handed at its Moundridge and Flint Hills meets because of the high school musical and illness, respectively. Doug Vogel said he has seen other teams — and had teams — in which the players try to beat each other. Not so with his team this year; they work well as a group, he said.
With teamwork, strategy, and a little bit of knowledge, MHS has a chance to improve on its 2008 season, when it finished second in the Mid-Central Activities Association and a tiebreaker away from advancing to the state championship round.