For the first time this season, Manhattan High’s Varsity Scholars Bowl team didn’t even make it to the semifinals. The team believes the dip in their performance can be attributed to a lack of participation.

“We were shorthanded,” Scholars Bowl coach Ted Dawdy said. “You know, I had a kid who forgot he had a band concert, I had a kid get sick, I had a kid who couldn’t get out of this Hindi test at the University, so we ended up taking three kids, which is plenty shorthanded. I had [senior] Josh Schwartz. We had [sophomore] Stephanie Fu and we had [senior] Arnav Das and that was the three. I was proud of them because you know when you play shorthanded, it’s tough. You can’t go up against good teams and play shorthanded. And so the good teams got us and we still ended up beating the average team so I was proud that they were able to do that.”

The competition took place at Lawrence Free State on Thursday, Dec. 3. This meet was on a much larger scale where only big schools, many if not all that are 6A, attended. Unlike previous competitions that were more regional-based, this competition pulled schools from Topeka and Kansas City.

“We went 4 and 3 in pool play and did not advance out of pool play,” Dawdy said.

The team tied for third in pool play with three teams that beat them, Blue Valley, Washburn Rural and Hayden — two of which had won State championships within the last five years.

“We got slaughtered. It was a bloodbath,” Schwartz said.

Typically, six people go to each meet and five participate in each round of the competition. However, the team was short of two members of what they could’ve had each time, and three this time around.

“We lost to three good teams but those are three teams that we can play with when we have a full deck,” Dawdy said.

For sophomore Stephanie Fu, this was her first varsity meet and she felt the team did the best they could do given the circumstances.

“It wasn’t really nerve wracking and [there wasn’t] much pressure because I know our team was strong and that was probably the best we could’ve have done with Blue Valley,” Fu said.

On Saturday Dec. 5, two Scholars Bowl members headed to Washburn University in Topeka where they competed in hopes of qualifying for the televised game of Quest. The team scored 1490 points, 10 more from last year and are awaiting the results as to whether they qualify or not and where they rank among other Kansas schools. In December, 65 to 70 Kansas schools will compete independently to try and make it to the top 16 which will then be featured on Quest.