Southern’s high school quiz bowl season is at a close. The team had an up-and-down season this year, and this article shares some of the results from its competitions.
Radio season opener
Southern started its season on the radio. The first competition each year begins on B103 against other local schools. These matches typically happen at 8:30 a.m. and are finished by 9 a.m. This competition involves only three students from Southern versus three students from one other school. Teams alternate questions to see who can get the most correct. The team with the most correct after a series of three questions is the winner of the match.
Most matches are two correct to one correct, but in the case of a tie, each team is given a chance to get one more correct. This continues until one team gets a question right and the other team misses. Southern lost both its opening-round match and its consolation-round match and was eliminated from the tournament.
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Pioneer Conference Tournament
Southern’s second competition took the team to HTRS for the annual Pioneer Conference Tournament on March 18. Southern had a successful day and received fourth place among the 20 teams present. This was perhaps the highlight of the season, as the team did not do quite as well the rest of the year.
ESU5 tournament and state qualifying
The third competition continued nearly a week and a half later, on March 25, when Southern attempted to reach the state competition. This competition is called the ESU5 tournament. Each school from the ESU5 region sends one or two schools to Hebron to compete in a double-elimination tournament.
This competition is unique in that it is the only type of competition in the state that allows schools from all different sizes to face one another in the same bracket. For example, Southern had to defeat schools from the size of Meridian to the size of Fairbury and even Beatrice to qualify for the state tournament.
This event also fell on the same day as State FFA and an indoor Crete track meet. This led to many of the local schools not having their full teams available. This hurt smaller schools more than the larger ones. This may have resulted in Beatrice and Freeman being the top two teams that qualified for state this year. Southern did well but could not manage to beat these tough teams this season.
MUDECAS tournament finale
Southern concluded its competitive season at JCC for the annual MUDECAS tournament on April 13. This is often the largest competition and contains approximately 32 teams from across southeast Nebraska. It is also often the toughest opponents Southern sees each season. This year, the team faced stiff competition and was unable to place in its final competition.
End-of-season community event
Next week, Southern will give parents, staff and junior high quiz bowl students a chance to compete in a full evening competition. This will happen on Tuesday, May 19, at 6 p.m. Organizers hope to see many people show up to see who the trivia masters are.
