You don't start out awesome

Do you know what's cool about quiz bowl?

When you're good, you're good. 

But people don't start out awesome. Everyone has to start somewhere, and while I don't really remember my first quiz bowl contest, I got a taste of what it was while I was at National Ayrshire Convention last week. 

There were three little girls - probably 10 years old - that were sitting in the quiz bowl room waiting for the contest to start. Partially because I'm a social being, and partially because I was being graded on my interaction with convention attendees (for the Queen contest) I decided to go over and talk to them. 

The girls were all from Wisconsin, and they were studying a well-worn packet of questions for the contest. I asked if they would like me to read questions so they could all study together, and they agreed. In lieu of buzzers, they would raise their hands and make a buzzing sound to "ring in". 

We went through questions, and they got most of them right. There were a few that we stopped and went over the reason that the answer was what it was. I think there's a lot to be said for understanding an answer rather than knowing it - if you know an answer, you can recite it, but if you understand it, you can apply that knowledge to other areas. 

This was demonstrated when we reached a question that I thought everyone knew: The four stomachs of a cow. I asked the girls what the four stomachs were, and they didn't know but one of them. And then I sealed my fate as a quiz bowl coach.

I drew a picture. 

A rather crude, rudimentary picture, but it got the point across. We reviewed the names, nicknames, and functions, and by the time we were finished and their ears were barely hanging by a thread, they at least knew that there were four stomachs and they had funny names, which is more than they knew at the beginning of practice. 

Possibly the coolest part of working with the girls was just getting to talk to them about what they did in 4-H and on their home farms, and they asked me all sorts of questions - after all, it's not every day that a national princess wearing a tiara helps you study for quiz bowl. 

They thought I was pretty smart, and stayed to watch the senior jeopardy contest, which I won, and the senior quiz bowl contest, which we also won.

And the absolute most rewarding part of the whole day was when one of the girls answered the question, "Who was the 2011 National Ayrshire Distinguished Youth?" From what I've heard, she got "Eileen" out just fine, but it was the last name, "Gress," that tripped her up for a minute. 

Their team didn't win, but they had fun doing it, and they assured me after the contest was over that they were going to study and come back for the 2013 convention in Ohio. 

That's my favorite thing about Ayrshire convention every year - seeing old friends and making new ones. Those girls have a great future ahead of them, and I look forward to seeing them move up through the fantastic programs that US Ayrshire has to offer.