Scholars Bowl hosted its home tournament after school on Monday, Nov. 23. Twelve teams competed at the meet, including one from Hays High. Newton and Wichita East made it to the finals.

The tournament had to be hosted virtually due to COVID-19. This entailed a lot of preparation and trial and error.

The Scholars Bowl team spent the practices leading up to the tournament practicing how to compete virtually.

Each classroom had a different Zoom meeting set up that the competitors would join and then the teams would use the website BuzzIn.live to buzz in and answer the questions.

“It was the first time running a tournament this way so we had no way to know what issues to even predict might come up,” assistant coach Jennifer Olt said. “Technology can be fickle, and of course, issues arose with teams disconnecting, teams having trouble joining breakout rooms and some teams losing their sound during the meet.”

Despite the issues that came up, Olt said she is thankful for the group of volunteers who made hosting this tournament possible.

“Even with some of these issues, I feel we ran a very successful tournament, especially given the newness of this type of tournament,” Olt said. “I would also like to thank all of our workers who volunteered their time to help us make our tournament a huge success.”

21abrooks@usd489.com