They met Thursday afternoons after classes for an hour — every Thursday since last September.
The work paid off. Tuesday night, East Rowan High School’s team won the countywide Quiz Bowl competition.
Senior Kristy Lamb says just being a good student was the real trick to winning.
“You can’t really practice for something like this,” she said. “It’s really about remembering the things you’ve already learned in school.”
More bluntly, teammate Adam Goldberg said, “You simply have to be omnipotent.”
Sponsored by Rowan Public Library for more than 15 years, the annual Quiz Bowl pitted East, West, South, North and Salisbury high schools’ teams against each other in a string of questions about composers, scientists and politicians, science, math and literature, history and current events.
East Rowan High’s team has had more time on the stage than teams at other schools. Its team won a regional tournament sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Asheville last year — for the second year in a row. It goes to Greensboro for a similar regional contest on Feb. 10.
With Tuesday night’s win, East Rowan’s team will compete on March 17 in Concord in a regional challenge sponsored by North Carolina’s public libraries. If it wins that round, state finals await on April 21 in Research Triangle Park.
“As long as the students come out for it, we’ll do as many (bowls) as we can,” said English teacher Andrew Crook, the team’s coach. “But often the students are already so busy.”
East Rowan High took the tournament by beating West Rowan High 115-50 in the final round.
West’s team met twice a week in the afternoon for 45 minutes, coach and geography teacher Keith Townsend said. They studied Time magazine and a book called the “Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.”
“It’s hard to prepare for because there’s no way you know what the questions are going to be,” Townsend said.
Parents — sometimes sitting hunched forward on chair’s edge — whispered their own answers with hands over mouths. They chuckled when a team consulted each other and one would give an answer with an exasperated expression — then find that they had guessed correctly.
In the bowl, teams of up to eight students send four at a time to compete, one school against another in matches that have three rounds. The first round of questions are worth 10 points apiece. Students must answer them individually without help from teammates.
In the second and third rounds, students collectively answer harder questions worth 20 and 30 points.
When a team answers incorrectly or not at all before a bell rings, the opposing team has a chance to answer for half the points.
Salisbury High School’s seven members met Tuesday mornings at school for about an hour before classes. They played games to practice answering questions.
Asked which President Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you’ll go far,” Salisbury student Justin Leonard guessed Franklin. That left little work for West student Lekith Lokesh. Often thrusting a fist forward or patting teammates’ backs after a successful answer, Lokesh blurted “Teddy Roosevelt.”
Held this year for the first time at the Rowan County Agricultural Center on Old Concord Road, the contest has outgrown the public library in downtown Salisbury, Librarian Betty Moore said. And home schoolers and private schools such as North Hills Christian School may participate for the first time next year.
North’s fresh team — they won two rounds Tuesday night even though it was a first match for all of the members — played Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit in recent weeks to warm up. Last year a North team won the countywide competition.
“We’re rebuilding,” student Kevin Weber said. “We’re gonna be raw next season.”
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