The BHS Scholars Bowl team’s season has started and they are already making a buzz around BHS.

The Scholars Bowl team has been practicing every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday since the beginning of October. They have attended several meets including meets at Wellsville, Prairie View and Eudora. The meet at Wellsville was the most impressive so far with the team going 9-0 and winning gold at the tournament. Math teacher Tom Sigvaldson, who is the coach of the BHS Scholars Bowl, that the start to the season has been a little rough.

“This year we are starting off with the same dilemma we always start with, and that is because we are a small school, same thing happens with all the area schools, we compete with other activities for peoples time,” Sigvaldson said. “So with the number of scholars bowl members that we have involved in the fall musical it’s been tough. We’ve had to cancel participating in a couple of events, four events I think already. But after the musical we will be back to full strength again and really see how good we can be so I’m excited about that.”

Sigvaldson is still optimistic about the season even with the rough start especially with meets like the one at wellsville.

“Our goal is to be competitive at every meet, to win regionals or at least advance to the state meet and when we get to the state meet we will see what happens. Cause there is a certain element of luck in every scholars bowl match. That you get matched up against people, the right people and the right school with the right questions,” Sigvaldson said. “Wellsville was a kind of an unusual event, doesn’t happen very often that any school can go into a tournament and win every single match. And I don’t remember Baldwin doing that since I’ve been coaching. So like I said we had to be lucky on some of the questions that it happened to hit something we knew or we had studied and that the other school did not know. But it was sure a lot of fun going 9-0 and winning a tournament cleanly like that.”

Junior Lyla Goans is now in her second year participating in Scholars Bowl and shares her thoughts about Scholars Bowl.

“I joined Scholars Bowl because I felt that being surrounded by other people that are trying to advance themselves in education would help myself in learning more,” Goans said. “My favorite part about Scholars Bowl in hanging out with the people and getting to know my friends.”

Goans also explains how Scholars Bowl is different from other school activities and it is still important to grow as a team this year.

“It’s more focused on educational things other than like events or athletics. My goals for this year and for the team are to improve as a team and to win tournaments and feel accomplished in all of the nerdiness.”