Though the De Soto Scholars Bowl team’s season is drawing to a close, an added factor has presented itself to the varsity team. This year, De Soto High School will be hosting the State tournament.

But with this big of a meet being hosted, almost everything has to go right to run smoothly. There are also some differences in this tournament than regular season tournaments.

Donna Rhodes, an English teacher at De Soto, is in charge of organizing the State tournament.

“It’s a little more complex. Because it is the State title, it’s pretty significant. The nice thing is the questions are already written so all we have to do is copy them, review them, and go through pronunciation, things like that,” Rhodes said.

To run a tournament of this stature, it takes a considerable amount of people, each with their own certain jobs. One person could be in charge of getting one specific room ready every round, or could help with greeting the teams and getting them checked in.

De Soto’s involvement with the State tournament is more than running and organizing the tournament this year.

The varsity scholars bowl team took third place at the Regional tournament, held on Feb. 10, which gets them a spot in this year’s State tournament.

This means less people will be able to help run the meet because they will be either participating in the team that is competing or coaching the team.

“We have plenty of workers and plenty of students who have stepped up to volunteer, so I think well be fine,” Rhodes said.

Even with all of these obstacles to tackle, De Soto will hopefully have a successful, smoothly run State tournament that will be enjoyable for all the teams traveling to participate.