As Scholastic Bowl coach Matthew Wiemer barely reads two sentences of a question, senior Hana Frisch is quick to buzz in with the correct answer. As the captain of the varsity Scholastic Bowl team, Frisch has led the club to great success, primarily through her quick answering and depth of knowledge in the categories.

Frisch’s passion for Scholastic Bowl stems from her lifelong interest in history and trivia.

“I’ve just always been interested in history. Even as a little kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist in third grade,” Frisch said. “For trivia, it’s always just been a fun thing. When I was young we had those Brain Quest cards you can flip through, and I just loved doing those.”

Upon his first time seeing Frisch in a match, Weimer knew she would be an invaluable member of the team.

“I first witnessed Hana when I just came to observe the JV team with Ms. Sosa a couple years ago when I was thinking of taking over for Scholastic Bowl, and I saw how quickly she was at answering questions,” Wiemer said. “Last year was my first year as the varsity coach, and it was very obvious very quickly we weren’t going to win games when Hana wasn’t there. So our two worst losses last year were on a day Hana had to miss because of illness.”

One may be wondering how she has learned so much to perform so well in the competitions, and according to Frisch it boils down to constant exposure to any form of information.

“Usually, I just read, watch, or listen to different things to learn interesting information. I sometimes just go through old Quiz Bowl packets with my Dad, who’s also really into history and trivia in general. So we go through things together, and he teaches me things and we chat about it,” Frisch said.

Senior Muhammad Afzal, one of Frisch’s fellow teammates, believes Frisch is the driving factor for the team’s success, through her dedication to her teammates learning and performance in competitions.

“Hana is an exemplary captain. She gives us advice as to how to answer questions effectively and how the team should guess should the need arise. She makes practice Quizlets for the team and shares it with us so we can memorize more information for future competitions,” Afzal said. “She also checks with each person to see who can come to which competition to decide who gets to play on the day of the competition. The intensity of the matches gets high and everyone on the team becomes stressed, but she is the one to keep her cool the most, which is why we elected her captain.”

For Frisch, trivia is a great way to learn more about the world and put a lot of things into perspective.

“The fact that you can tell someone a kind of crazy fact that changes their perception of the world. For example, there’s more distance between the pyramids built in Cleopatra’s reign than the entire history of the United States basically. It’s kind of crazy, but also kind of changes your perspective of things.”