COLLEGEVILLE - The Saint John's Prep knowledge bowl team is traveling to Brainerd to compete in the state tournament Wednesday-Thursday.

Coach Charles Miller says Saint John's Prep is the only St. Cloud area team to make it to state. They recently won the state tournament in 2014. The team has beaten every team they have faced this year with the exception of Holy Angels Academy.

Sample questions being read during a recent practice. (Dan DeBaun, WJON)
Sample questions being read during a recent practice. (Dan DeBaun, WJON)
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Miller says competition questions can range from anything from math to geography.

"Every field that you would study in high school has a question at some point. We've seen weird questions about aviation and engineering. There was one meet where there were five questions about trains...I don't know why anyone would know those, but they did."

The Saint John's prep team is stacked with students who have done anything from scoring a perfect 36 on their ACT test to being named the best in Minnesota on the National German Exam. Some of the older students have been accepted into schools like Berkeley, MIT and the University of Chicago.

Senior Justin Terhaar says knowledge bowl involves a lot of practice and guessing.

"My favorite part is when you get half of a question and you really have no idea how you got the question right. Sometimes it's just luck and sometimes it's being good at knowledge bowl and it feels really good."

Miller says the team also finished 2nd at state last year behind Glencoe-Silver Lake by one question.

"Its become a culture at Saint John's Prep, knowledge bowl is now a cool thing to do and all the smart kids want to be on knowledge bowl."

The team enjoys being able to compete against other schools and meet others through the competition.

"If I'm talking to anyone outside of Minnesota, it's always 'Quiz Bowl' there. I feel like with Minnesota it's like duck duck grey duck, we do 'Knowledge Bowl' here," Senior Sam Rodgers says.

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