Knowledge bowl team advances to region meet

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Placing sixth out of 33 teams at the sub-regions meet at Fergus Falls last Tuesday, March 12 was one of the New York Mills Knowledge Bowl teams. The team included Isaac Geiser, Alana Koljonen, Alex Mack, Soren Stout and Simon Reising.

NY Mills has 13 students this year in knowledge bowl. The season started in November and kicked off with a meet in December at Concordia College in Moorhead. 

“We start at Concordia, and that’s a bigger meet, we had a team get fourth there, so it kinda was like, ‘holy buckets, maybe we have a more competitive team this year than we have the last couple,’” said Coach Cody Geiser. “I don’t know if we have ever been below about the middle of any of our competitions, there are generally 20-35 teams, so they’ve always been at least in the middle, towards the top.”

Geiser, who until he started coaching the sport three years ago, was totally new to the program. Also new to the sport is German foreign exchange student, Simon Reising, who decided to try out the program this year as is not offered in his home country.

“A lot of my friends were in it and I thought it sounded like fun,” said Reising, a junior. “We don’t have something like that in Germany and I like trivia.”

Reising specializes in science and math questions during the teams practices and meets. He, like the rest of the team, was looking forward to competing at the regional competition on Tuesday.

“I am looking forward to the regionals, I hope we make it to state, like I said I like trivia,” Reising said. “Obviously, missing school and spending time with friends.”

Aubrey Barthel, a sophomore, laughed and agreed with Reising about the ability to miss school for meets. While knowledge bowl meets typically take place during the school day, they rarely conflict with everyday life in high school and students are easily able to make up their work for the days they miss, according to Geiser.

Aubrey Barthel joined the team at the same time as classmate, Alana Koljonen, both sophomores, after they experienced a practice round in William Grieger’s classroom in seventh grade. They enjoyed it so much, they both signed up for the program.

“I just thought it was fun when we did a practice round in Mr. Grieger’s and decided to join,” said Koljonen.

“I thought it was fun when we did practice,” said Barthel, explaining that they joined the team together.

Soren Stout also enjoys the program, having joined two years ago after being told he would excel at the sport.

“I joined because I was told I would be good at it because I’m very knowledgable about things related to history,” said Stout. “I’m the history nerd.”

Stout and Koljonen join Reising in his hopes to continue on in the coming competitions and look forward to seeing their results for the season.

“I hope we can get to State,” said Stout. “I wonder where we’ll get, hopefully the season doesn’t end, but if it does, we’ll make it count on Tuesday.”

“I’m looking forward to see where the season ends,” said Koljonen. “See how well we do and see where we can get.”

Barthel, who also wants to see their team’s success this season, is also looking a bit further to next year as the team will grow older with more upperclassmen, something that’s been lacking in the past few years.

“I’m looking forward to next year’s season, because we have no seniors (this year), so next year we’ll have some seniors, we’re all older, and there’s some good ones that’ll join next year from the junior high.”

Geiser backed up Barthel’s statement about having a younger group during his three years in leadership.

“Like Aubrey said, I think we should be better the next couple years, we’re pretty young yet,” he said. “We have been really young the last few years. It’s just that 9th graders haven’t had the time to learn as much as juniors or seniors yet.”

Geiser has enjoyed his time as coach and looks forward to seeing the team grow in age as well as number in the coming years. He said that he especially enjoys watching the students engage with each other over their common interests.

“Seeing the kids interact with each other,” he said. “People that are interested in knowledge and trivia, those kind of things. I think the group has a lot of fun with each other, getting to share insight on how to think about questions even, those coaching tips and that kind of stuff. Unlike other sports I coach, there’s less making a starting lineup because everyone gets to compete during the regular season. They enjoy each other’s company and have a lot of fun with each other.

“Most of the time they want to practice,” he continued. “Like you heard Simon say, it’s fun to even just practice and go through questions for them, similar people that like to sit at home and watch Jeopardy, but here they’re actually participating.”

Though during the regular season each school is able to have three teams, they are limited to two teams during post season. This makes for more intense competition and less distraction during the meets.

“I think sometimes during the regular season, not necessarily our school, but some of them get a little distracted,” said Geiser. “It’s a lot of three hours of question and answering in a row, here I get to see them compete against good teams and see what that’s like a little more.

“They were so excited to advance,” said Geiser of what he’s looking forward to. “I don’t know the last time we advanced to regions, it’s pretty competitive at sub-regions, so getting to see them compete one more day where it’s a little more intense.”