Champlain Valley returns to national scholars’ bowl competition

(This story has been changed to correct the spelling of Leah Rauch’s name.)

A Champlain Valley Union High team that doesn’t get as much recognition as other teams will be celebrating the Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta vying for a national championship.

CVU won the state high school academic championship at the end of March in the Vermont-National Education Association Scholars’ Bowl, defeating South Burlington 420-265. This was the Redhawks’ second straight state championship.

The Redhawks have been to the national championship five times in the last six years. In four of those years, coach John Bennett said his teams have made it to the playoffs. With hundreds of teams from around the United States, making it to the cut that winnows the field down to 96 teams is remarkable.

There are so many teams competing because some schools bring more than one team. “Some places bring three or four teams, especially ones that are local to the area. There’s actually a lot of good teams in Atlanta area,” said coach John Bennett. So, he expects to see a lot of competition from the Peach State and elsewhere.

It is “pretty awesome to be the team that comes from Vermont,” he said.

Last year, Bennett was more confident that his team would take the state title. That team went undefeated (47-0), and in those wins, never really had a close game.

This year was a rebuilding year with three of the four starters on the A team graduating. After his team beat a team from Hanover, N.H., that plays in the Vermont league, he started to think that maybe a state title repeat was in their future.

The team from Hanover has beaten CVU three times before, but this time the Redhawks beat them twice.

“Once that happened, I realized, you know, we can win this,” Bennett said. “They sort of hit their stride in January. They were playing great from that point on.”

One of the hallmarks of CVU’s team has been its speed in answering questions. The team uses a “pyramid style” to practice which starts with a question or clue that is very vague or difficult. Each succeeding question is progressively less vague or easier with the last clue very specific.

The Redhawks have become skilled at answering the questions quickly.

The other strategy for winning at scholars bowl competition is trying to capitalize on your opponents’ mistakes and answering when the other teams get a penalty for the wrong answer.

“We’ve been pretty good at that, too,” Bennett said. “The final round is just one question after the other, rapid fire, and we’re pretty good at that, too.”

CVU’s scholars bowl team has taken advantage of the school’s daily C3 block of time during the school day. The three Cs stand for connect, clubs and communities. The block of time in the middle of the day is about 30 minutes when students gather to access opportunities that exist to enrich the learning experience outside the classroom.

The coach said practices are designed to be as close as possible to what the actual games are like, so that the various quiz formats aren’t new to them.

Bennett is a fan of CVU’s C3 program which it started four years ago. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we won three championships in the four years of C3.”

For all of the team, except for one senior, this will be their first time going to the nationals, so he expects it to be a very exciting experience for them, while it will be Bennett’s last time. After 30 years of teaching, he is retiring at the end of this school year.

It’s been quite a ride. In 1984, Bennett was on a team in his senior year at Rice that won the inaugural state competition and went to the nationals in Dallas.

He taught at Mount Anthony Union for six years where he started a team, before moving to CVU in 2001 and becoming its scholars bowl coach.

In 2007, his Redhawks won the first of the school’s four scholars bowl state titles.

Leah Rauch was on the JV team last year, and she is excited to spend the Memorial Day weekend with her family in Atlanta for the competition this year.

“My whole family is all up in a tizzy about it,” she said.

Winning the state title was also very exciting. Rauch was proud of several of her answers. For example, she knew that toxoplasmosis is a disease or infection cats can carry and that babies can catch.

In the three-letter animals section of the state competition, she knew that the answer to a Nepalese bison was yak.

The competition is very much like the TV game show Jeopardy!, so it probably helps that she comes from a family of Jeopardy! fans.

Over 30 National Academic Quiz Tournaments players or employees have participated on Jeopardy! Seventeen of them qualified for the show’s Ultimate Tournament of Champions, including show host Ken Jennings.

It also probably helps that assistant coach Kiran MacCormick appeared on Jeopardy!

Other members of CVU’s team that competed in the state title competition are Jacob Graham, Zoe Mui, Charles Redmond, Wylie Ricklefs and Grace Warrington.