‘Lots and lots of hard work’ leads Pretzel Scholastic Bowl team to win it all
By Marcel Pacatte
Photos/Special to The Source and Marcel Pacatte
There’s intelligence. There’s strategy. There’s study. There’s hard work. And there’s camaraderie, goofing around, inside jokes and “bus talk.”
And for the New Berlin High School Scholastic Bowl team, now there’s a national championship to show for it.
If you’re not familiar with Quiz Bowl — the terms are interchangeable — or its competition format, teams face off and are awarded points for correctly answering questions posed by a moderator. The questions, especially to an outsider, can seem insanely obscure.
If you know the rules and put in the work and pay attention, well, they’re still insanely obscure but you have a path to possibly answering them correctly.
Here’s an example of an actual question from an actual bowl tournament this past season:
This man coined phatic communication to describe communication that maintains relationships rather than exchanging information. A phrase usually attributed to this man tells anthropologists to go into the field and get off the veranda. A book by this anthropologist analyzes how a set of formulae that serve as verbal acts were used to cultivate yams, bananas and taro. This anthropologist asked why men would risk life and limb traveling across the ocean to move worthless trinkets in describing the exchange of necklaces and bracelets by Trobriand Islanders in the Kula ring. For 10 points, “Coral Gardens and Their Magic” and “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” are by what anthropologist from Poland?
Don’t exhale yet.
Remember, you’re not using your phone or laptop and there’s no phoning a friend. Most of the time you can’t even consult with a teammate. And forget about cribbing from notes.
It’s either in the noggin or it’s not. And even if it is in the noggin, if you’re not fast enough on the buzzer the other team might snatch those 10 points from you before you have a chance to, um, get off the veranda — if you even know what a veranda is, much less a Kula ring.
Give up?
Why, it’s that scamp Bronislaw Malinowski, of course.
Now, let’s stipulate that these New Berlin kids are smart, because they are. But they don’t have to be immersed in the oeuvre of Polish anthropologists to compete because smarts alone don’t necessarily translate to points. In addition to being smart, there’s savvy involved.
If they don’t immerse themselves in anthropological studies coming out of New Guinea a century ago, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility — they freely admit to nerd tendencies — they just need to know that Malinowski is out there, that there is something called phatic communication, and to then be able to connect the rest of the dots offered in the structure of the question — with lightning speed to press the buzzer before the opponent does — and get the answer out. Correctly.
If you’re not impressed yet maybe you should know that the five varsity team members — Carter Clair, Matthew Kapinus, Evelyn McCoy, Ethan Perry and Ellery Rollins — participate in a season that lasts from October to May and that they spend hours poring over dense material in preparation for the competitions, which can be punishingly long days and involve hours of travel to and from meets and tournaments, both on weekends and after school, and that teams at other schools fear them.
To see them on the street as civilians, individually or collectively, they don’t appear particularly intimidating.
But toss them a Malinowski-type question on any of the standard quiz bowl topics and get ready to duck, because the knowledge flies. Just ask the 222 schools at one championship competition or the 320 teams at another — or the 515 individuals who stood by as Matthew Kapinus finished first overall nationally the same day that New Berlin finished first nationally in the Very Small Schools category and fifth place overall nationally in the Small Schools category.
If it’s not fear, it’s awe. And respect.
And they tell you that New Berlin wasn’t always the team to beat at these competitions. They remember a time when it was not uncommon for them to finish 32 out of 32. Scholastic Bowl competition during the regular season isn’t divided into classes based on enrollment, so the Pretzels have to hang with teams from schools at which enrollment outstrips the entire population of New Berlin, sometimes several times over.
Did they whine about it? Did they despair?
No.
They made a decision.
They were determined to move the needle, to get better, to crawl out of the nerd basement.
And here they are, national champions and best brain in quiz bowl nation.
How’d they do it?
Kapinus has the buzzer on this one.
“Lots and lots of hard work,” he says, smiling at his teammates. “Many, many hours.”
You look at Kapinus and you realize his thumb is in a splint. You have to ask: Battlefield injury from aggressive buzzer-pressing at nationals?
He seems almost embarrassed that it’s not, saying that it came from playing baseball for the Pretzels. You then have to talk about the Pretzels having recently played a game at Busch Stadium and what a thrill that must have been.
He seems embarrassed again: No, he missed that because he was in Florida, competing at nationals. You can’t be two places at once, and life is about choices and priorities — not that he doesn’t care about baseball.
He just went where he could have the most impact.
He is their go-to guy when it comes to questions on literature, history, science and fine arts. He also holds his own on geography. Everyone, though, works on developing an expertise. Carter Clair, for instance, is their data guy. The expertise helps things go more smoothly at crunch time during competition, knowing that you can count on a teammate to field certain questions instead of having to scoop it up yourself.
And there are two types of questions in the sport, tossups and bonuses. The tossups are posed to both teams at the same time and are the reason for the buzzers. Bonuses are three-parters that only are asked when the tossup is answered correctly. And they don’t relate to the topic of the preceding question. And the team can lean on one another for an answer. Sometimes.
It’s complicated! You don’t just walk in, sit down, buzz in and run the table.
Here’s a question: What draws someone to joining the team, to being attracted to the sport?
They mention their parents. In Ellery Rollins’ case, she says she didn’t have many friends and her mother suggested that Scholastic Bowl might be a way to build friendships — finding your people, bonding.
Boy, howdy!
In Kapinus’ case, there was shyness. He didn’t talk. Maybe this would coax him out of his shell.
Boy, howdy!
And then you can debate whether it was nature or nurture — did they take to it because of an innate curiosity, or did the sport push them to become more curious persons. Little of both? Lot of both?
And friends, they are. Talkers now, too.
The bond that comes from those shared hours, whether on the road or practicing or competing, forms. And when there’s just five of you on varsity, you almost have no choice but to like the others.
They also have rituals, routines and superstitions. Rollins mentioned lucky socks that she dons for tournaments. There are seating orders, on the bus and at competitions. And that bus talk: Some topics, even though it’s just banter, are off limits unless they are on the bus together. If someone brings up a bus talk topic when they’re not in transit, the others are quick to remind the offender that it has to wait.
For after-school competitions, there’s always a stop at Road Ranger before they get on the interstate at New Berlin, where they fortify themselves with snacks for the trek. And, yes, probably the same snacks each time.
When they travel to the Chicago area, they always stop in Pontiac at Wally’s. And then they hit the fashion outlets in Rosemont, but only after the first day of competition.
Oh, and there are exceptions to the rule: Ethan Perry claims to be immune to ritual and superstition. Teammates call him on it, citing examples of things he always does, but he is adamant: “That has nothing to do with Scholastic Bowl.”
Most of the tournaments are an hour and a half or so from home; few are closer. Springfield High School has a team, but whatever. Just kidding. The Pretzels respect the Senators.
There’s not a lot of mystery to this group; they’re normal kids. With nerd tendencies. Committed to excelling.
They all get something out of the experience competing. Evelyn McCoy says she got her career out of it. One of her topic areas is fine arts. Through studying, she has realized that she wants to be an art historian. Scholastic Bowl opened that up to her. The others concur.
They delight in one another’s company — their coach, Matt Kapinus’ mother, Laura, says it’s fun to watch them interact.
They needle each other about epic flubs and are not embarrassed to recount them to strangers. Some of the questions they were asked for this story, everyone knew what the others’ answers would be. And many were met with good-natured laughter at the others’ expense.
Carter Clair recounted a flub we’ve all seen on various game shows: He gave an answer without having fully understood or processed the question — don’t underestimate the heat of competition — and simply recited pi rather than specifically calculating the value of pi. As you can see, we’re not talking Family Feud. This is Quiz Bowl. Nerd tendencies. Savvy. Smarts.
To play, to compete at the New Berlin level, it’s simple, they say.
“You just need curiosity. Intelligence helps.”
At that last sentence, they break into peals of laughter.
But they’re serious.
