The De Soto High School Scholars Bowl team took first place at the Regional competition at Spring Hill High School on Feb. 4.
Going into the tournament, Scholars Bowl members knew winning would not be easy.
“We knew that it would a tough pool, and we knew that it would be difficult, but we figured since we had worked the entire season in preparation for that day we’d be fine and we’d make it to finals,” junior Trevor Whitlow said.
With the loss of all the starters from last years’ State runner-up team, coach Phillip Hamilton admitted he was nervous, saying the team was “really inexperienced … even our experienced players aren’t as experienced as previous years.”
The team started the tournament 2-2 in pool play, with a dramatic loss to Topeka Hayden High School.
“Hayden is always good. So, we shot ourselves in the foot. We played really poorly, we made some mistakes that JV players usually make, and it really cost us,” Hamilton said. “Those mistakes were unfortunate because we also gave the other team the answer on a few of those mistakes. So, not only did we take points off the table for ourselves, but we gave them things that they didn’t know. We lost 80 to 20.”
Hamilton credits the second round loss to the teams inexperience, but said it did not reflect their knowledge.
“It was good we got that out of the way early in the tournament so we could make some corrections and not when the stakes were a little bit higher later on,” Hamilton said.
The team was able to place in the top three of their pool and move onto the ‘Finals’ round.
“[In Finals,] you have six teams and it’s basically round robin. You all play each other, so there’s five rounds in total. We won all five of those rounds,” Whitlow said. “We figured we would be somewhere in the top and we competed well.”
The team played both teams they had lost to in pool play, and in both matches, they were able to come out on top.
“Finals went extremely well. We actually had three rounds where we did really well, and then we had two rounds, one against Tonganoxie and one against Hayden, that were really close. Thankfully, both the ones that were close went our way, and we avenged both the losses we had from before,” Hamilton said. “We beat both the teams that beat us earlier in the tournament. We scored the most points in the tournament by the end.”
Hamilton knew they had taken first by the end of the fourth round, but chose not to tell the team until after all five rounds were finished.
“I felt like it would be good if they kept doing their best. So, coming back into the room and being happy, but trying to keep them focused was interesting,” Hamilton said. “I was really excited because things were so tight at the tournament that even after four straight wins I was a little worried there would be some crazy tie-breakers or something, and we managed to avoid that.”
Hamilton and Whitlow agreed every player carried their weight in the tournament.
“We have a lot of strengths. My primary strength is social science. For others, it might be math. [Sophomore] Cody Moose is really good at math. He’s freakishly fast on those math questions. On what would normally take fifteen seconds, he takes like five seconds,” Whitlow said. “Then we have [senior] Jaycie Thaemert, and she’s like the glue of the team. She knows everything and I would say that the others on the team supplement her knowledge.”
According to Hamilton, Thaemert scored over half of the teams points.
The Scholars Bowl team will compete at State in Fort Scott on Feb. 13.
“I feel pretty confident that we’re going to be successful and that we’re going to place,” Hamilton said.