EDWARDSVILLE – Metro-East Lutheran High School’s scholar bowl team defeated teams from high schools across Southern Illinois to win the championship of a televised game show tournament produced by PBS.
MELHS won the 2023 Scholastic Hi-Q tournament in a match the team played in the fall but which was only recently released by PBS station WSIU Television. MELHS defeated Calloway County High School by a score of 655 to 455 to win the tournament. Calloway was the previous Hi-Q champion, having won the tournament in 2022.
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Thirty-two teams from high schools across southern Illinois competed in Scholastic Hi-Q, an academics-based game show that has been produced by WSIU Television in Carbondale since 1985. All the episodes of this year’s tournament are available for viewing on the PBS website (https://www.pbs.org/show/scholastic-hi-q/).
“Winning Scholastic Hi-Q in only our second year competing in it was a great way to start the season for us and really set the tone for what we thought we’d be able to accomplish,” said Shanna Covarrubias, MELHS scholar bowl coach.
Hi-Q is a single-elimination tournament. MELHS had a bye in the first round of the tournament, then defeated Massac County in the second round of play with a score of 675 to 210. In round three, MELHS topped Marion High School with a final score of 590 to 370.
MELHS faced Carbondale Community High School in the semifinals, and won 770 to 320 to move on to the final round where they defeated Calloway County, which was the winner of last year’s Hi-Q tournament.
The release of the Hi-Q tournament caps off a very successful season for the MELHS Scholar Bowl team. The team won the Class 1A State Championship at the Illinois Masonic Academic Bowl in Bloomington, Ill., and placed second among small schools in the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) state tournament and seventh among all schools statewide. In the National NAQT tournament, held last weekend in Chicago, MELHS placed 17th nationwide.
“This season was by far the most successful season MELHS has seen as a team,” Covarrubias said. “We set a lot of individual records for the team, especially Silas Curtis.”
Curtis, who is a senior at MELHS, was named to the all-tournament team at every tournament the team competed in this year, including the National NAQT tournament. In the Open Division for NAQT, which was open to all private schools nationwide, Curtis placed fourth in the individual competition.
In addition to Silas Curtis, the MELHS varsity Scholar Bowl team includes Sophia Ball, Truett Oberhauser, Mary Curtis, Harry Mueller, Ethan Massa and Peter Curtis.
Metro-East Lutheran High School (MELHS) has been providing academic excellence in a Christ-centered environment for more than 40 years. For more information about Metro-East Lutheran High School go to www.melhs.org.
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