One of the USC Knowledge Bowl teams poses with their second place trophy, which they earned at regionals to punch their ticket to the state competition at Cragun’s Resort in Brainerd on April 9-10. Pictured above from left to right: Maddex Niebuhr, Wyatt Haugh, Seth Kayser, and Ian McQueen.

The United South Central Knowledge Bowl team finally has an answer to the most important question of the season: yes, they will be advancing to state this year.

“For those who might not know how Knowledge Bowl works, the first round of competition is a written round, where students have 45 minutes to answer a set of 60 multiple-choice trivia questions,” coach Kayt Klemek explains. “Students then are sorted into teams of four, and then placed into different rooms based on their scores from the written round. Three teams are allocated to each room, and then compete in the oral rounds, where teams compete against each other and buzz in to answer trivia questions for points.”

There are a total of four oral rounds, with teams moving up and down between rooms based on their scores from the previous round. Teams have 15 seconds to buzz in after a question is asked, with an additional three seconds to give an answer after buzzing in. After the final round of oral competition, teams are scored a final time and awards are assigned.

“The trivia questions are really a mixed bag: there can be history, sports, literature, agriculture, poetry, general trivia – it’s a little bit of everything,” senior Ian McQueen shares. “Part of the challenge is having team members with different knowledge bases and strengths to be able to answer a variety of questions.”

McQueen, along with fellow seniors Maddex Niebuhr, Wyatt Haugh, and Seth Kayser, have been some of the strongest competitors on the Knowledge Bowl team this year. At their most recent meet, which was the regional competition to determine qualifications for state, their team of four placed second overall in Section 2A and were recognized with a trophy and medals.

“The nice thing about competition during the regular season, which is only five meets, is that we’re paired with similar-sized schools in our section, so we aren’t going up against the Mankato schools or even Blue Earth Area,” Klemek remarks. “At state, there will be two schools from each section competing. I believe the other school from Section 2A who will be competing alongside us is Martin County West.”

In total, there are 35 members of the USC High School Knowledge Bowl team, which is comprised of students from grades 10-12. There is also a junior high Knowledge Bowl team for grades seven through nine coached by Nathan Scruggs, which currently has 32 students.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth in Knowledge Bowl over the years, which is awesome for us because it means we get to have more teams competing at once,” Klemek explains. “We used to have only three or four teams, but now we have enough students for six or seven.”

“Nathanial Clore is the godfather of USC Knowledge Bowl,” Neihbur adds. “He was the one who convinced all of us to join, along with a bunch of the younger kids on the team.”

Across their team of four, the seniors have a good variety of strengths across the various categories. McQueen specializes in geography and random trivia, Neihbur excels at 1900s to modern history, Haugh’s best categories are sports and WW1 and WW2 history, and Kayser covers sports, random trivia, and agriculture.

“Literature and poetry are our weakest categories by far,” McQueen admits. “Literature questions are either super obvious or incredibly niche, which makes it pretty difficult.”

“We also struggle with chemistry, but that’s why we have Seth,” Haugh jokes. “The rest of us all took physics – he was the only one on our team who took chemistry.”

When asked what some of the benefits to joining Knowledge Bowl were, the senior boys had a pretty firm consensus: a strong element of team bonding, challenging the brain, and spending time with your friends.

“Knowledge Bowl really challenges your brain, and you also get to pick up a bunch of random trivia in the process,” McQueen shares. “It doesn’t require a lot of extra research, either – as long as you’re participating in class and doing your homework, you’re also practicing for Knowledge Bowl.”

“One thing I really like about Knowledge Bowl is getting to compete against people I might know from other activities,” Haugh remarks. “I’m also involved with athletics, so there are kids I compete against from different schools in Knowledge Bowl that I’ve also faced off against in sports. It’s an entirely different skillset.”

The seniors also had some words of wisdom for younger students who might be interested in joining Knowledge Bowl in the future.

“Knowledge Bowl is a very easy concept to grasp,” Kayser shares. “If you’re interested in what we do even a little bit, you should definitely sign up and give it a try.”

“If you’re going to try out for a sport, it takes you a while to learn all of the rules and how to compete as an athlete,” Haugh adds. “Knowledge Bowl is completely different, because everybody knows how to answer a question. It’s a lot easier to learn how to compete.”

The USC Knowledge Bowl team will be heading off to state competition on April 9-10, which will be hosted at Cragun’s Resort in Brainerd.