Last weekend, the Manhattan High School Scholars Bowl team took part in the State Scholars Bowl competition held at MHS. The team finished third overall, marking one of the most impressive finishes in years.

“The guys made this happen through their own efforts and hard work. This is all on their merits and abilities,” assistant coach Tim Ekart said. “I think we met our expectations. Third place is an awesome achievement and I’m really proud of the guys, as is Mr. [Ted] Dawdy. Kudos to them.”

After qualifying for the State competition by placing in the top four of their regional meet earlier this month, finishing third place was an unexpected triumph for MHS. With so many strong schools qualifying for the competition, placing highly was not expected to be easy. The Indians ended up surprising, and even shocked their friendly rival Washburn Rural by winning head-to-head.

“We were going into this knowing that we were an underdog,” Ekart said. “Washburn Rural has always been our rival, our kryptonite so to speak. The guys stayed calm and cool through that and we beat them.”

Being able to host the event was also an added benefit for the team.

“It was an honor that the state asked us to host. It gave us a great deal of confidence,” Ekart said. “Having home field advantage and not having to travel was an advantage.”

Senior Luke Wuri is a major contributor to the team. As an upperclassmen, the State meet was his final event with Scholars Bowl. Wuri first began participating in Scholars Bowl in middle school, seeing it as an opportunity to meet new people who shared his interests. He later moved to Manhattan the summer of his sophomore year, where he has been a member of the MHS Scholars Bowl team ever since. According to Wuri, his final competition exceeded his expectations.

“It feels really good. All of our hard work and motivation paid off,” Wuri said. “There was definitely a lot on the line in this competition. We just tried our best and it turned out we finished third place overall.”

Now that the official season has ended for the Scholars Bowl team, meetings will cease. However, that doesn’t mean that team members will not continue to prepare and keep their sharp minds in shape until next year. Ekart believes that the team has an impressive group of JV underclassmen waiting in the wings for their opportunity to join the varsity team. Despite the bar being set high by this year’s high finish, the team should be ready to meet the challenge once again.

“We’ve got some really good sophomores and freshman coming up. Most of them are very driven students,” Ekart said. “They are some very highly motivated individuals and they are driven to education. I see good things in our future.”