After a long and grueling season, the De Soto Scholars Bowl team finally ground to a halt. The team lost many of it’s seniors last year, but, against all odds, the team not only made it to the state tournament. They placed third, with Andover High School taking first.

The Scholars Bowl State team was made up of seniors William Walker, who was team captain, Madeline Field, and juniors Joel Sweeny, Nick Mechler, Francisco Valenzuela and Jordan Wolf.

“We did a great job this year. We grew as a team. We had 52 different members participate in at least one event for us, which is an all-time high,” Scholars Bowl head coach Phillip Hamilton said. “We also managed to place at League, Regionals and State. Our placement at State was our sixth year in a row placing at State. And considering we had a lot of member turnover and a lot of graduates, I thought it was a good job on everybody’s part to make up for that experience gap.”

The team hadn’t done as well as they had hoped they would at the beginning of the season, but they turned it around by the end.

“We did a lot a better than we thought we would do. Definitely compared to the beginning of the Scholar’s Bowl season, a lot of us went in thinking we wouldn’t even make State, and then we went up and placed third,” Walker said. “Considering we hadn’t won a meet prior to that, I think most people are fairly happy with how we finished.”

In addition to competing in the State tournament, this year the competition was hosted by De Soto High School. Under Scholars Bowl sponsor Donna Rhodes’ careful guidance, the tournament went off without a hitch.

“Mrs. Rhodes did all of the organizing, and she did an outstanding job. It’s always hard to arrange the rooms so that people know where they are, and can get to them quickly,” Field said.

Even though the tournament came  on a Sunday, a plethora of volunteers ensured that the tournament ran smooth.

“We ran it very well, Mrs. Rhodes did a great job. I thought that our moderators and judges did a great job as well as our student workers, and the fact that we could get everybody on the Sunday of a long weekend is a testament to the health of the Scholars Bowl program. I think we ran our tournament as good as or better than the other tournaments I’ve been to,” Hamilton said.