Courtesy photo
Left to right: Corinne Cranwell, Ethan Farland, Ben Sundheim, Jack Quinn DeSousa and Ayden Pream.

By Brendan Henry
The Surveyor

Berthoud High School’s (BHS) Knowledge Bowl team placed third for Division 4A at the Colorado Knowledge Bowl 2024 competition last week. The team was one of 12 competing in the 4A division and placed fifth in points scored out of 60 total teams.

The team is led by Kristen Vigil, a math teacher at BHS. For practice, she gathers the team at lunch every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to cover a wide range of topics, mostly academic trivia but with some pop culture trivia as well to diversify the content and to ensure the team is keeping up with the times.

Vigil was asked to coach the Knowledge Bowl team after the previous coach left two years ago. Participating in local trivia nights provides Vigil with material to bring to the team during practice, and this inspiration has ultimately led the team to success.

Filling up the team’s roster has not been a problem, as Vigil says there are more on the team than can compete at the team level, only being allowed four per team and one alternate. Vigil estimates that there are 18 students currently on the team. To bring students in, Vigil has asked other teachers if they can identify if a student may be interested and also says that word of mouth amongst students tends to bring more in as well.

With 18 team members and only five competition spots (including the alternate), Vigil has established a point system for deciding who gets to compete. Students are given a written test at the beginning of the year to gauge their knowledge, and points are granted both for showing up to practice and for responses to questions during practice. Some of the earlier tournaments in the season also assist the assessment process as well.

The earliest tournament is always the first weekend in November, and for Berthoud, the season will go into April for the national competition. The rules are the same for the national competition, four team members and an alternate, but each school can have as many junior varsity teams participate as they would like.

Like any other tight-knit group, the team has developed some inside jokes amongst themselves. They have enjoyed answering questions with “George Washington” when they did not know the answer, but Vigil says this response was the correct answer for one of the questions presented to them. One of the winning trivia questions for the team was “What celebrity made the moonwalk dance famous,” and Vigil says they have frequently received questions on the Scopes trial regarding the teachings of evolution in schools.

Vigil gives credit to the community for assisting the team, including Berthoud’s appointed school board member Stu Boyd and his wife. Members of the community have assisted in keeping time and reading questions, and Vigil wants people to know that “if anybody ever has any interest to reach out to us, or if they were on Knowledge Bowl teams in the past and they want to be readers to just let us know.”

“They really enjoy it,” Vigil said about the team. “They can have a really good time. These are kids who typically aren’t really in sports. They don’t have those sorts of accolades, right? They get really proud about this part of it.”