By Elsie Gin

Cony High School’s Quiz team qualified among the top 16 teams in the Maine High School Quiz show this year.

The competition will test students on a variety of trivia knowledge covering history, modern events, music, sports and math.

Cony’s Quiz team started four years ago and ramped up its efforts to qualify for this year’s competition, said the team’s advisor Mr. Scoville.

“I was in a quiz team in high school,” Scoville said.

This is where Scoville’s enthusiasm to train the students derives from.

The team has been putting in extra hours of practice and recruiting honors students to ensure they qualified for this year's quiz show.

The team is made up of nine members, of which four — Mallory Turgeon, Jack Begin, Dylan Begley and Ian Harden — will participate on the quiz show and two members — Jasmine Daley and Ted Campbell — will serve as alternates.

Begley said, “ I was invited by Mr. Scoville to come join the quiz team.”

Begley added, he has a personal interest in trivia from statistics, History and Geography. He also mentioned that being apart of the quiz team has increased his level of responsibility. He stated that he tried harder to focus on current events although he’s stronger in older, historical events.

Turgeon, a senior said,”I joined the quiz team because I felt it was interesting and because I love the idea of healthy competition.”

Turgeon strengths are on current events, music and people. Unlike Begley, who is stronger in historical events, she had to work harder in those areas.

“I wanted to be on the team that was aiming to be a part of the top 16 teams in the state,” said Begin.

Begin’s strengths are sports and current events. To be better at trivia, he has taken extra time to study on his own.

To optimize the amount of information the team could learn before the competition, the members divided the topic areas by people's strengths and interests. In years past, all the members focused on all the topics equally.

Harden, also a senior on the team,said he joined the quiz team because he had been helping with the qualifying tests in previous years.

“My areas of greater strength are in Math and Science, but I’ve had to also have some knowledge in arts and history,” he said.

The Maine’s High School quiz show has already been filmed with Cony competing, but won't be aired until February 2020. The participants have signed a waiver that prohibits them from stating the results of the show, if they do their school won’t be allowed to compete the following year.