On March 14 and 15, Fossil Ridge High School’s Knowledge Bowl team spent hours upon hours in front of their screens competing in the 2022 Governor’s Cup. After two days of hard work, Knowledge Bowl won first place with a total of 194 points. Liberty High School won second place with 156 points and Fairview High School earned third place with 146 points.

Knowledge Bowl is an academic competition where groups of students from various schools compete against each other in answering questions covering a wide range of topics such as art, music, science, current events, and many more. Students compete in various rounds earning points for answering questions and whichever team answers acquires the most points, cumulatively, wins the competition. The rounds consisted of both oral and written forms of responses.

Olivia Wang, a senior on the team, describes that this win was not a surprise, but still felt like an amazing accomplishment.

“Leading up to [the win] I was really nervous because we had done well throughout the rest of the season and we won last year. So I was hoping to preserve that image and be able to continue on the legacy from last year’s team. So, winning was not unexpected because we had a rather large lead going into it. But it was really euphoric. And the people on the team are so amazing. So I was really really glad that those amazing, wonderful, brilliant people were able to get a win and that we were all able to celebrate such a great season together.” said Wang.

Fossil’s Knowledge Bowl team has a history of success after winning Nationals last year, however, this success was not easily obtained. A major challenge Knowledge Bowl members have had to overcome in the last year is being online for both practices and competitions. Many members were worried about how they were going to be able to withhold their agility and to ensure nobody’s Wi-Fi would go down in the middle of the competition.

“It is very different than in person. I think some of the interacting with other teams and just spending time together as a team just looks different. We have to be in our own rooms and offices playing from home but I think we have adapted really well to that format. But I’m hopeful in the future we’ll go back to in person and be able to hang out and eat donuts,” said Katie Rude, the teacher who has entered her third year sponsoring Knowledge Bowl.

Rude and Kaitlyn Corcoran are the coaches for this year’s Knowledge Bowl team with the captain being senior Dean Jones.

Wang explains that being on Knowledge Bowl has taught her a lot about the importance of leadership and teamwork.

“For me, people often think of teamwork as having a leader uniting a bunch of people with lower ability to accomplish one goal but knowledge bowl has shown [me] how several people of all vastly different, vastly amazing abilities can come together to accomplish this one thing. So it kind of shows you how teamwork doesn’t have to be like everyone pulling their own abilities and trying to go to one goal. It’s rather a bunch of people using their own separate abilities to accomplish that goal.” said Wang.

As for what is next for Knowledge Bowl, next week on March 30, the team will be competing at the Poudre School District meet with three other high schools in the state. Rude also describes the possibility of the team making it to Nationals once again this year. Make sure to send a huge congratulations to all the winners and wish them luck on their upcoming competitions.