By Mike Sherfy, KnoxPages.com reporter
MOUNT VERNON – The Mount Vernon High School “In the Know” team bested two teams at the Public Library’s 26th Annual “In the Know” Challenge before being defeated by a team of librarians in the evening’s last contest.
A crowd of about forty people gathered at the Mount Vernon Public Library to watch four teams face one another in a grueling display of knowledge. The rules were simple. Moderator (and MVHS Social Studies Teacher and “In the Know” coach) Rob Fetters asked the questions and the first competitor to buzz in with the correct answer earns a point for his or her team. A wrong answer allows the other team to listen to the entire question before offering an answer. At the end of the game (typically after about thirty questions), the team with the most points wins.
In the first match, a community team calling themselves “Gray Matters”—consisting of Bill Rutherford, Terry Maloney, Bill Rutherford, Jason Belcher, and Kristin McKeever—challenged a High School squad consisting of Michael Philips, Gazim Saciri, Toby Baumann, and Michelle Silverwood. The score was kept low, largely because neither team fared well in an early string of popular music questions. Later in the match, another thematic string of questions revealed that both teams possessed a startling and profound ignorance of the characters and events portrayed in J.K. Rowling’s series of “Harry Potter” books. Despite the difficulties, the MVHS students prevailed when not even Bill Rutherford’s in-depth knowledge of “The Price is Right” proved sufficient to catch up with the younger players. MVHS won 9 to 7.
The Friends of the Library fielded a team—consisting of Rick Schlegel, Roy Glaser, Robert Calabretta, and Sharon Holdren—against a fresh squad of MVHS players consisting of Tim Mayhan, Daniel Wood, Toby Bauman, and Greg Gillen. Both teams struggled with associating novels with their characters and neither fared well in identifying the muses of Greek mythology but both teams did well overall. Tim Mayhan’s domination of virtually all questions involving math, however, gave the High Schoolers a decisive advantage. MVHS defeated the Friends of the Library 14 to 19.
Rob Fetters, standing left, asked the questions at the Library’s In the Know Challenge. Team Library members seated, from left to right, are John Chidester, Griffin Rothgeb, Rachel Frady, Lisa Blaisdel. MVHS team members, Tim Mahan, Daniel Wood, Toby Bauman, and Greg Gillen. KnoxPages.com photo by Mike Sherfy.
But it was the third match that proved their undoing. A team of librarians and library staff members—including John Chidester, Rachel Frady, Griffin Rothgeb, and (in a last-minute substitution) Lisa Blaisdel—faced off against the same veteran MVHS squad that had emerged victorious in the previous match. The point tally ran high on both sides. Things got messy. An allegation was made that an audience member had assisted a player in identifying the Rogers & Hammerstein musical based on the play “Green Grow the Lilacs”. A player later challenged a claim that Teddy Roosevelt’s first inauguration occurred in 1901. Neither team knew what famous mythological creature was born out of Medusa’s blood. “Mountbatten” proved more difficult to spell backwards than one might expect. Most disturbing to some, however, was the moment when Tim Mayhan’s math skills briefly led him astray when he miscalculated the square root of 1,225.
“Tim got a math question wrong,” exclaimed someone from the back of the audience, “My whole life has been a lie.”
It was a good-natured game that will live in infamy…if only because no one will ever REALLY know the score. At least three people kept track of points independently and no tally matched either of the others. The consensus, though, is that the Librarians won with a final score of 21-17, 20-16, or 21-18…or somewhere thereabouts.
The “In the Know” match at the library was just for fun, but the MVHS team usually participates in more serious knowledge-based competitions—sometimes even with scholarship money on the line. Occasionally, their matches are even televised. To see the MVHS team in action against Bexley earlier this year, visit this website: http://www.10tv.com/content/sections/video/index.html?video=/videos/Brain_Game/2015/bexley-and-mount-vernon.xml
