By Morgan Taylor – Staff Reporter

The annual Brain Bowl, which was hosted by the National Honor Society, took place at Jonathan Law High School on May 4.

Students and staff competed against each other in answering trivia questions which were created by NHS. Each team had four students which represented their grade along with a team of four faculty members.

“The purpose of the Brain Bowl is to get the entire school community working together to raise money for brain cancer research (and to have fun doing it),” said Ms. Turcotte, advisor of NHS.

The students who represent their grade are chosen by a test which is offered for anyone to take on one day.

“NHS members create the 25 multiple choice test and I administer it in one day,” Turcotte said.  “The top four scores for each class serve as the teams.”

Preparation for the Brain Bowl is very important to the success of the fundraising event.

“Once NHS members decide on a theme they film and show the video to generate interest and to recruit people to take the preliminary test,” said Turcotte. “Then we design and order the shirts, come up with three rounds of questions, and fundraise in the cafeteria for the two weeks leading up to the event.”

This years theme was based off of the show “The Office.”

“Every year we choose a new theme; something that we can make a funny/interesting video to use to generate interest and to get everyone to take the preliminary test,” Turcotte said.

The first round was between the four grades.

At lunch the week prior to the event, NHS members walked around asking for donations. Every time a grade raised $10, they received a point which they started with in the 1st round.

“I think that the first round questions were harder just because it took a while to get adjusted to the speed of the questions and get used to the crowd,” junior participant Grace Wootton said.

The seniors started off with 23 points, the juniors with 11, the sophomores with 10, and the freshmen with 11.

“It was really difficult to that we started out with less points,” said Wootton. “The junior team would have made it into the final round had the seniors not started out with so many more points.”

The second round was between the top two scoring teams of the first round: the juniors and the seniors.

The third and final round was between the top scoring team of the 2nd round, the seniors, and the faculty team.

“It was definitely more challenging competing against the seniors than I expected,” science teacher and faculty team participant Mr. Aguiar said.  “They knew a lot of trivia, especially about the pop culture and music questions.”

In the final question, the teams are allowed to wager points.

The faculty won the Brain Bowl this year in the final question which was “Who played the character of Creed in The Office?”

“For the final question we wagered all of our points,” said Aguiar. “Our motto was ‘Go big or go home!’ We were willing to risk it all to win it all.”