On Saturday, Dec. 5, the FHN Scholar Bowl team had their first competition of the season at Washington Middle School. The team competed in nine of the twelve rounds, which lasted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The first five rounds were randomized, with teams competing against one another regardless of power level, whereas in subsequent rounds teams were matched according to their levels.

“It went good for the first tournament of the year,” sponsor Chris Witthaus said. “New players got some good experience for our league meets, and there was a lot of improvement from the beginning to the end of the day. I want us to do better this season than last season. We’ve got some good returning players, as well as good new players.”

The team took 27th place out of about 47 competing schools. The team was missing a core Varsity member, which had a large impact on the team’s success. According to returning member senior Pratyush Sontha, the team’s main strengths lie in math computation and science, as well as social studies. Studying their main weakness, the literature category, may lead to better performance in future competitions.

“I think we have potential with our Varsity members,” Matthew Vishy said. “They’re smart people.”

Despite a rough start, team members feel like improvement throughout the season is definitely possible. On Tuesday, Dec. 8, the team will have a scrimmage, which Witthaus believes will be good practice for the team. Scrimmages are competitions against other teams, but are less competitive than competitions at the tournament level.

“I feel like in upcoming tournaments, we should do better,” Sontha said. “It was the first tournament, so everyone was a little anxious. Once the team gets into the swing of things, I think things will go a lot smoother.”