Meet the Team: East’s Categories team competes for championship title

Senior Stuart Hanson envisions March 7, imagining the TV screen illuminating Channel 2.

Hi, welcome to Categories! I’m your host John Bartel. Today we are bringing you a great matchup between Shawnee Mission East and Blue Valley High School competing for the championship title this season. Let’s go meet our contestants! First, from East…..

Hi I am Stuart “the man” Hanson and I’m a senior.

I’m Ian “Five Teddy” Gould. I’m a junior.

I’m “Gnat” Nitsch and I’m a senior.

I’m Brian “Mario” Bernhardt and I’m a senior.

I’m Charlie “The Phenom” Cronenwett and I’m a freshman.

***

Three days before the championship episode, Hanson sat in Room 402. He imagined this scene in his head: John Bartel’s booming voice through the microphone, how he and his teammates will introduce themselves and how accomplished they would feel, celebrating together on set, if they were to win the championship episode of Categories, an academic quiz bowl competition — for the second time in a row.

During the team’s last practice — in the midst of anxious preparation — all five team members began brainstorming. They had agreed that if they earned a spot in the championship at the beginning of the year, which they did through a one point win against Blue Valley West, they would introduce themselves using made up nicknames given to them by their teammates — a true testament to their joking ways and camaraderie.

But the team only spent a few minutes joking. It was three days before the final game of the season, and this practice was for preparing.

“The seven years’ war was lost by what French king who was the lover of Madame Pompadour?”

Buzz.

“Who was Louis XV?”

“Correct.”

Buzzer drills were their main focus. If the team is even a split second late, it could cost them the game or send them into a five-question tiebreaker like in the semifinal Feb. 28. With a final score of 26-25, the team realized that reaction time can make the difference between losing and winning.

The East Categories team can be considered one of the most successful teams at East, beating out football and soccer for total number of championships. And with a current 60 percent accuracy rate — the highest of all categories teams in a league of Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley schools —  they believe they have a chance at winning yet another championship.

The members of the Categories team began hour-long practices in teacher sponsor Nathan Southwick’s room at the beginning of the school year. Every Monday, all students were welcome to practice trivia questions and compete in buzzer drills in order to earn a spot on the five-person team.

According to Southwick, typically around 10 students attend these practices each week in order to compete for a spot on the televised team. The five students chosen for the televised competitions are based upon seniority, academic expertise and quick reaction times to questions and can be rechoosen before every match.

“We have to pick the best of the best,” Southwick said. “It’s really based on the students performance and attendance at practice. We start counting how many [questions] each student gets right during practice.”

After being the team’s coach for nine years and a former contestant in high school trivia, Southwick has learned that choosing the team members is not solely based off of who knows the most.

It’s who has the best guesses, who has the fastest reaction time, who can be composed and be willing to take risks when answering questions. Through stacks of trivia question books and weekly practices, Southwick has worked to develop each team member’s individual skills, as well as the group as a whole.

According to Hanson, Southwick quizzes their knowledge and works to improve the team’s strategies such as buzzing in at specific times or the best ways to approach Team Huddle questions — the only questions permitted to have discussion between teammates when in search of an answer. One of the most important strategies to both Southwick and Hanson is knowing your teammates’ areas of knowledge.

“I know almost all of our American History, Government and Economics and our Politics questions, but I don’t know our mythology questions like Ian [Gould] does or the science questions or the music questions,” Hanson said. “Other people on the team know all of that really well so I don’t buzz in first on those questions unless I am positive of the answer.”

This season, the Categories team is paying close attention to the areas their teammates do best. According to Gould, who specializes in history, geography and mythology questions, this tactic is what has contributed to their past success when jumping to hit the buzzer in previous games.

Through observation, Gould picked up on the fact that Hanson spends almost every waking minute listening to NPR and reading up on the New York Times, while other teammates, like Nitsch, specialize in topics like music history due to her extensive participation in band. Having a team with wide-ranging knowledge allows them to be more accurate and obtain a more fluid team dynamic according to Southwick.

“Nat, Stuart, Myself, Brian and Charlie have a great dynamic,” Gould said. “Although I really love trivia and all of the random knowledge and interesting pieces of it, I really do enjoy this group of kids. When we meet on Mondays or at games, the whole team is very enthusiastic about working hard and winning.”

Another championship trophy for the school would give these students the opportunity to add their names to the list of winning East Categories teams. Before Southwick took on the role as trivia coach, social studies teacher Nick Paris led the teams to 22 victories in his 25 years as coach from 1989 to 2014.

In the Air Force, Paris was known as ‘Mr. Walking Encyclopedia’ because of the way he retained knowledge on topics like sports history and philosophy. When he was first approached to be the coach he jumped at the opportunity because he always had a love for trivia. The dominance of East’s program in the game, having won previous championships, enticed his competitive spirit even more.

“I have just been blessed to have really good students at this school who love knowledge for knowledge’s sakes,” Paris said. “They have curiosity and are intelligent. Essentially, most of the time East has had the best team.”

While being involved in Categories is fun for these students because of their love for random facts and knowledge according to the Hanson, it’s also true competition — they attend practice like any other athlete, compete in competitions and fill the display cases with championship trophies.

“I think these kids get really serious about [trivia],” Southwick said. “It is a lot of fun for them, but they also want to win which is why they do so well and pick themselves up after their losses.”

*The team went on to win the championship game beating Blue Valley 36-22.

art by: Lizzie Kahle

photos by: Luke Hoffman