Normally, a Scholars Bowl tournament has either 15 or 16 questions per round, ranging from foreign language to science, fine arts, math, and year-in-review. For the TOC, with 20 original questions and two follow-up questions per correct answer, there’s a possibility of up to 60 questions for one round.

The varsity team for the day consisted of seniors Courtnee Wisdom and Jera Wolke, and juniors Cooper Boyles, Nathan Ohl, and Molly Schmanke at Bishop Carroll High School Jan. 6. The first round began at 8:20 a.m., and the final round ended at 3:30 p.m. A total of 40 other schools competed, including  Buhler, Maize, St. James, Valley Center, Independent, Hesston, Cheney, Thomas-More Prep, Topeka and Pratt.

“I like TOC because we get to experience other teams from outside of our area and league, and we get to see how they play,” Wisdom said. “That, and because it’s different from other Scholars Bowl tournaments.”

Another difference is that at a typical meet, team members are allowed to confer before answering a question, but at TOC, for the first question of each category, team members are not allowed to discuss. If they answer the question correctly, just that team gets two more questions in the same category, and they’re allowed to discuss.

“I think we did pretty good,” Ohl said. “Most of us hadn’t done Tournament of Champions before, so it was something new.”

For the morning bracket, the team got fifth, and in a different afternoon bracket, sixth. At the end of the day, the Cardinals ended in 22nd place out of 40; Wisdom was the top scorer with 150 points and Ohl was second with 130 points.

“I think the team did pretty good, considering we were one of the smallest schools there” sponsor Connie Pauly said. “A lot of the other teams were defending State champions, too.”