Vicksburg trivia team earns trophy, bragging rights at state semifinals

Published 10:38 am Friday, July 15, 2016

Arrange these in chronological order: the year Kanye West released his first album, the year Honey Boo Boo was born, when Italy won the World Cup in Germany and the year “Mad Men” was released.

The final question at the Saturday’s Jackson Regional Trivia Championship, the state semifinals for the National Trivia League, held extra importance for the only team competing from Vicksburg, who took home the win, the trophy and the bragging rights by one point.

“The win really legitimized just how good the Vicksburg region is,” team member Luke Gurtowski said. “If we got one question wrong, we could have gone from first to seventh just like that.”

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The Exit Chased by Bear team, who borrowed their name from the only stage direction William Shakespeare ever wrote, got their start playing trivia on Thursdays at 8 p.m. at KJ’s River Town Grille, Gurtowski said.

“It’s not a huge venue, but it’s pretty competitive,” he said. “I got started because there’s not much else to do on a Thursday in Vicksburg.”

Though there isn’t a limit to the number of people that can play on the team at KJ’s, only five were able to compete Saturday at the Lost Pizza Co. in Ridgeland. All but one of those competing work at Engineer Research and Development Center, and Gurtowski said trivia is the main way he connects with his coworkers, who work in different departments at ERDC.

“It gives us something to look forward to,” he said. “It’s our weekly get together.”

Saturday’s event was arranged similarly to trivia night at KJ’s, he added. Each half of the event consists of three rounds of three questions where teams must pick a point value for each round based on their confidence in the categories, ranging from pop culture to science. At KJ’s, teams can pick questions counting 2,4 or 6 points, and at Saturday’s semifinals, questions counted either 5,7 or 9 points. The final and half time questions are normally multi-part or chronological, he said.

“It makes sense to have a team that knows different things. You have a sports guy and someone knowledgeable about geography and (so on),” he said. “In our team, no one actually prepares. We just go with it. We just know a little about a lot.”

Exit Chased by Bear advanced to the semifinals because they were the highest scorers at KJ’s for the 2015-2016 trivia year, which runs from July to July.

They advanced to the state championship on July 23 after their win Saturday, for which they won a trophy and $250 to split among the team members.

“At the end of the day, we go to have a good time, but we win money and bragging rights,” he said.