Inside the Grand Island Corporate Bowl

by Alex Richter
Grand Island Dispatch, March 7, 2008

The Nerd Herd (photo by Larry Austin)

The Grand Island Corporate Bowl is a great experience for high school students, and a lucrative one at that.

A trivia competition pitting teams of Grand Island High School students against one another to win scholarship money, the Corporate Bowl awards $7,000 in scholarships to winning teams.

Again this year, I was able to compete for these prizes. For the past two years, my team was unable to win these scholarships (team “CANS” and team “CANT”). Fortunately this year, my team was able to make it to the next round in Tuesday’s preliminary round.

Just after last year’s event, I was approached by one of my friends, Julia Figliotti, to join her team. Of course, I agreed, and with two of our other friends, Amanda Jaeger and Luke Burkhart, we created our team “The Nerd Herd.” We were all excited to play in this year’s Corporate Bowl. It was not only because we are all on Masterminds, and the game is similar, but also because we are all determined to win the scholarship, and what better way to do it than by working with some great friends?

As the event approached, we organized a day to practice some general knowledge trivia questions from various games like Jeopardy, One vs. 100, or Trivial Pursuit, in hopes that some of the questions would come up. And, oddly enough, an incredibly similar one did. (What is the smallest borough borough of New York City?)

The day of the event was incredible. I was excited for the entire day, and I could tell that others were ready for it as well. That night, I arrived at about 7 p.m. to watch the other team. Since we were the second to last team to play, we were able to watch and answer along with the other groups from our seats in the audience. Game after game, teams won, and teams were eliminated. It slowly moved to our turn.

As we walked on stage we were all a bit nervous. It was exciting to be in front of the audience, but I was more excited to play. As the game started, we were getting great questions. The only problem was ringing in first. As per the rules, we had to wait until the question was completed before we could ring in, at which point, everybody was ringing in at the same time. It was tough trying to get the answer of the question and focus on when the last word of the question was completed, but that’s part of the challenge. Some examples of questions include: What is the largest city in India? (Mumbai), What are the factors of the equation x2-6x+8=0? ((x-4)(x-2)=0), or if n+8 is an even integer, which of the following represents the next highest even integer in sequence? (n+10).

Our team was determined to beat out the competition. Round by round we worked hard to answer the toss-up and individual questions, and our determination showed.

During our game, our team came in first in a very close match, and the two following teams were within just a few points of us. We were all ecstatic when we found out that we had won, and we are all anticipating the final night on Tuesday, March 11, where we will see if we will take home the top prize of $4,000. Either way it will have been fun, and I already can’t wait for next year’s game. Good luck to all competing teams, and go Nerd Herd!

Sights of Corporate Bowl

A-W-E-S-O-M-E Awesome, Awesome, Totally celebrates a correct answer
during its game Tuesday in the Corporate Bowl. From left: Stefane Samland,
Autumn Kaiser, Alex Avery and Ashley Bass.. (photo by Larry Austin)

Moderator Michael Grosso posed the questions to the Corporate Bowl teams.
See page 2 for scores and results of Tuesday’s games. Play continues on
March 11 at the Grand Island High School Auditorium. (photo by Larry Austin)