Aneka Zarger

Staff Reporter

On Nov. 17th Scholars Bowl participants at De Soto High School gained a new perspective on how exactly the meets work behind the scenes while hosting a junior varsity meet.

In a Scholars Bowl meet, teams of five students compete against each other to demonstrate their knowledge of a variety academic subjects taught in school and current events.

In this case, since DHS held the meet there was a lot more work and preparation. The hosting schools do not participate in their own meets.

Not only are the students responsible for practicing for future meets, they are also in charge of setting up the rooms according to standards.

“The questions are based on our curriculum so students need to know what they are studying. We also have lots of practices, which gives them extra exposure to the material as well as a Quizlet app that students can study on their own,” said junior varsity Scholars Bowl coach Donna Rhodes.

This includes setting up buzzers, finding out which classrooms are available and preparing them, finding multiple judges and helpers as well as setting up refreshments for the competing schools and any visitors.

“We have to have adult judges ,and we can use some student moderators, but that is a bit of a hassle and we need all kinds of workers,” Rhodes said.

According to the Kansas State High School Activities Association Scholars Bowl manual, moderators have to have a good speaking voice, be able to accurately pronounce questions, have a solid general educational background and have a positive attitude.

In addition to moderators, judges are also critical to have in order to run a meet. Each room where competition is being held needs a judge in order to oversee the round itself.

With 12 rooms holding competition, that is another 12 people needed to host a meet.

There are also other people needed such as scorekeepers, people to run the registration table and people to regulate the traffic in competition sites.

One of the biggest changes in regards of previous meets to this one, is the amount of schools participating in the meet.

“This time we had 24 teams coming,” Rhodes said.

While two pools are usually run at DHS, due to the number of teams, “we will be running three pools which means we need 12 rooms so there is a lot of set up and tear down,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes thought the meet was successful, “We needed all the hands we had,” Rhodes said. “But overall it went well.”