The scholastic bowl team started their pre-season with a big win on Saturday, Oct. 20, when the varsity scholastic bowl team won the Riverdale tournament, in Port Byron, Illinois.

In this tournament, each match had 20 questions worth 10 points, with a possibility of three bonus question, also worth 10 points. This tournament also had the “power rule” in play, which added an extra five points if a team answers a toss-up question before a certain point.

A long day of answering questions left the Pirates with a win. Evelyn Larson ‘‘19 was named second on the All-Tournament team, and Sophia Getz ‘ 20 was named fifth all-tournament team for their pool. The high scorer for the Pirates was Evelyn Larson, who answered 32 questions five of those questions had the power. Sophia Getz also helped the Pirates with 24 correctly answered questions, nine of which earned five bonus points. Evan Soat then followed with 7 correct answers, one with the power. Roni Skinner answered four questions, Daniel Heid answered two questions, and Henry Anderson answered one question. The record for the day was 6 – 1.

The first match the Pirates played was against St. Bede, a private school roughly the same size as GHS. The team gave it their all. Unfortunately, the Pirates start the morning off with a loss. The final score of the match was 295-305. That is one question away from the win.

The team them moved on to face Mercer County. The game started off rough, but after brief halftime speech by Coach Ron Jenkins, the Pirates made a comeback. Starting at question 14 the Pirates start to make their way back from a 100-point deficit. With the last 6 questions all going to the Pirates, the team was able to pull out a win, beating Mercer County by 80 points.

Carrying through with the momentum of the last match, the Pirates easily beat Annawan. Missing only 6 out of 20 questions, the game finished with a score of 390 – 50.

Ready to face Morrison, a team that has beat the Pirates before, the team focused on the main goal. The match got off to a rocky start as the team quickly fell behind. With the help of Sophia Getz, and Evan Soat, the team clawed their way back up to just 25 points behind by halftime. With another pep talk from Coach Jenkins and captain Larson, the Pirates were able to turn the match around to a victory of 325 – 275.

Getz ‘20 said, “I think it was a challenging match, but once we were more focused, we were able to succeed.”

The final match of the morning was against Amboy. Starting off strongly, the Pirates correctly answered 8 of the first 9 questions and continues the momentum to a victory and a final score of 335 – 165.

After the morning matches, the Pirates walked into lunch in a three way tie for first in Pool B.

After all the tie breakers were finished, the top two teams from both pools advanced to the finals. From Pool B, Galena and Mercer County went on, and UT and Riverdale continued from Pool B. For the Pirates, the first game in the afternoon was against Riverdale, a team who had gone undefeated in the morning matches.

The Pirates took an early lead and were able to maintain it throughout the whole match to beat Riverdale. Even though, they weren’t Betty, Jughead, Veronica, or Archie, Riverdale gave Galena a hard match with a final score of 370-220.

In the words of Henry Anderson, “I pity the fool who goes 5 – 0 in the morning just to lose to us.”

Moving into the finals, the Pirates faced Mercer County, the winner of the other match.

The Pirates had lost to this team in their previous match-up, and things seemed to be going the same way at first, and the team was down 110 – 170 at halftime. However, with a quick refocus and a little bit of fun, the team was able to come back from this deficit and answer 7 of the last 8 questions correctly, which helped the Pirates win the match and the tournament with a final score of 320 – 280. Larson ‘19 said, “It was a long day with a rewarding end, that the team really fought for. We did our best and worked really hard to win today. It was a great way to begin our season and I can’t wait to see what happens from here.”