After this year, many of the players who were in top teams on New Ulm’s knowledge bowl roster and made it to state years prior will be leaving. This means there will be tremendously different teams in the following years.

Although many top players are graduating, the coaches are still confident in the team’s ability. “We always have the opportunity and potential to go to state,” Knowledge Bowl advisor Ms. Novacek said.

One of the top players is Kaden Schafer, a junior. Kaden said, “I was on ivory,” in regard to last year, which is one of the top teams.

Kaden sees this year’s purple team having, “Henry (Albrecht), Sophie (Burger), Ryan (Martinka), and me.” He predicts next year’s team being “George Gag, Josh Gordon, and me.”

He has been competing in knowledge bowl since seventh grade and joined because “all my siblings were in knowledge bowl and were quite successful with it.” He is best in math, geography, and history.

When asked about the freshmen, Kaden said, “I’m sure there’s someone in that bunch that’s going to be on Ivory or Maroon.”

A lot more freshmen have come in this year compared to last. In fact, there are more people in Knowledge Bowl this year compared to last year because of the Freshmen. “We have a great amount of freshmen,” Novacek said.

Ms. Novacek also said that since there are a lot of freshmen this year, it’s likely there will be more freshmen who will joining Knowledge Bowl next year.

Knowledge bowl has been competitive for the past ten years, reaching state multiple times and winning state in many of those years. In the past 3 years, New Ulm has gone to state and placed in the top 3 at each meet. But in the last state meet they placed second mainly because of the written round. The purple team consisted of only juniors and seniors last year.

This has caused coaches to take a different approach in the written round, where they saw lower performance. “In general this year we want to work on our written round,” Novacek said.  They are looking to put more emphasis on it as well as using small strategies to improve performance.