From Teachers To Champions: A Trivia Team’s Amazing Journey

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- A twenty-plus year trivia team veteran started small and has grown into a powerhouse to be reckoned with. It Just Doesn’t Matter started out as a group of South Junior High teachers in 2003, merged with another team in 2009, and brought home the coveted Minnesota Masters of Trivia Traveling trophy from the KVSC Trivia Marathon in 2011.

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It Just Doesn't Matter has merged several times and had multiple different team names.

A few more mergers later, and It Just Doesn’t Matter would take the title again for three straight years in 2016 through 2018. Team Captain Holly Wieber says merging gave them some advantages and let them make some life-long friends:

"We just, we had a good vibe, we loved playing together, we loved that it increased our numbers so we had more people to kind of cover everything we had to do and we liked that combining with a different team just gave us a lot of different kinds of people to play with from lots of different walks of life and so we just kind of all fell in love with each other."

Wieber says they merged again years later and are kind of a multi-team juggernaut now.

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The contest poses a lot of challenges, but the biggest one is where to eat.

She says a lot of planning is needed for the contest, especially for a team of their size, and one of the biggest challenges each year is feeding everyone :

"The biggest thing we have to worry about is how are we feeding ourselves, like we know everyone's playing and everyone's showing up, we are just like, when are we getting food, and where are we ordering food from.  We play out in a rural area, and so we don't have super easy access to food all the time, and so a lot of times some of us have to run to places to get food."

Wieber says the team just gels, and their favorite part of the contest is the speed rounds and the questions that send them out to a location in search of the answer. She says they look forward to the marathon each year for the excitement and the memories they are sure to make. Wild West Trivia, KVSC’s 47th Annual Trivia Marathon takes place from February 13th through the 15th and costs $60 to play.

READ MORE FROM AUTHOR PAUL HABSTRITT