Scholastic Bowl has recently won their conference championship title, beating teams from Evanston Township High School and Vernon Hills High School in the last round of the tournament to claim first place. This has been the best conference showing West’s Scholastic Bowl team has had since winning the championship in 1992.

Club sponsor and social studies teacher Matt Wiemer is proud of the team for their grit, persistence, and intellect helping them achieve the conference-wide win.

“It was super exciting. I think we knew we had a great team this year. We answered the right questions at the right time against Evanston and Vernon Hills. I couldn’t be more proud of the students that we had. This is all on them — it’s their amazing intellect that won it,” Wiemer said.

The team has renewed confidence regarding the upcoming regional competition, where the intellectual squad will face off against some of the top teams from the Chicagoland area in a multi-round event. The competition will be held at the Latin School in downtown Chicago.

“I’ve never gone to regionals before, so I’m not sure what to expect; but, I think we have a lot of confidence going into regionals now that we didn’t have prior to [this win]. I think we can spend some hours down in Chicago and see if we can go several rounds, which would be really exciting,” Wiemer said.

Team captain and senior Hana Frisch is hopeful for the regional competition, and is proud of the team for their breakout win. However, there’s some uncertainty since the team hasn’t competed against most of the teams attending.

“I’m so excited about the conference win. I really hope we at least win one match for regionals, but we haven’t really gone against any of the teams so I don’t know what to expect,” Frisch said.

Team members like senior Muhammad Afzal are excited and proud of their win, confident it will motivate the team to go to even greater lengths at their biggest test yet.

“The conference win was amazing. I am glad to say I am part of the team that achieved this. To be fairly honest, our win didn’t seem possible to me, but we pulled through with extreme tenacity and focus. With this win, I feel as if we have a much better chance at regionals, especially with team morale raised and members taking time to study,” Afzal said.