Last year (2024) was the best Brentwood’s Scholar Bowl team had ever done, winning districts and making it past the quarterfinals of the state tournament, but this year, the team has already achieved both of those milestones. Plus, this past weekend, the team competed in the NAQT 2025 Small School Nationals held in Chicago!
For those unfamiliar, Scholar Bowl is an academic competition where teams of students compete and answer questions from a wide range of topics like literature, history, science, current events, and more. It’s a team-based competition that uses a buzzer, kinda similar to Jeopardy.
“Questions start off simple, so that the people who are newer to Scholar Bowl are able to answer, then they begin to get more difficult,” said Ms. Musterman, BHS’s Scholar Bowl coach. Ms. Musterman began coaching in 2018, making this her 7th season coaching for BHS.
Not only has this year’s team won districts again this year, but this past Tuesday, April 22, the team traveled to Bloomfield, Missouri, to compete in the state quarterfinal rounds, where they pulled off a 2-game win against Bloomfield. This win means that the team will get to compete in the MSHSAA state tournament in Columbia on Friday, May 9th.
In addition to the state tournament, this year the Scholar Bowl team qualified for a separate national tournament, the NAQT Small School Nationals, which was held in Chicago this past weekend, April 25-27.
At the NATQ Small School Nationals, the team played 10 full games on Saturday, April 26th. They had multiple close games and a very tough draw, playing four teams that made it multiple game rounds into the double-elimination finals bracket, also competing with the tournament winner!
Scholar Bowl students work hard during practice, but also by paying attention to what they are learning in school, for they never know what will come up as a question in a competition. “In practice, Ms. Musterman helps us study subjects and gives us guides to study; she’s also very encouraging in games,” said sophomore Odyss Morgan.
The team has obviously been doing great as a team, but they’ve also earned accolades as individuals. This year,
Juniors Alex Tung and Rohan Dixit placed third and fourth as All-District scorers.
Another shout out to Alex Tung; at the nationals tournament, he placed 33rd individually out of 520 students in the public school division, and 5th place individually in the state of Missouri! Congratulations to Alex!
“I am very proud of all the players. This was a fast-paced, high-caliber tournament like nothing we have played before, and they put in a great fight against all the teams, said Ms. Musterman, They work really hard.”
Congratulations to the Scholar Bowl team and good luck as they compete in the state tournament on May 9th.
