In the COVID-19 world, nothing is normal. But that isn’t necessarily always a bad thing.
For Mahomet-Seymour’s scholastic bowl team, it was an opportunity to participate in an international scholastic bowl competition.
Mahomet-Seymour senior Nate Lundstrom, who lived in Chile while his father was on sabbatical during his sophomore year, helped organize the event.
While attending school at The International School Nido de Aguilas, Lundstrom was part of the scholastic bowl team. Even after he headed back to the states, the students still included him on scholastic bowl group chats.
Through correspondence, Lundstrom learned one of his classmates was working on fulfilling a community service requirement for her senior year through creating an opportunity for scholastic bowl participants to compete against one another on a virtual platform.
That’s where Lundstrom’s helpful spirit came in: he helped her understand how virtual competitions were happening in the States so that she could create a platform where students from The International School Nido de Aguila could compete against Mahomet-Seymour, a school in New York and other schools in South America South America. Forty students from eight schools in three countries participated. A team from Europe was also supposed to participate, but canceled.
Lundstrom said that the single-elimination tournament that was conducted in English went well for the Bulldogs. One Mahomet-Seymour team made it into the finals while the other made it into the semi finals. Santiago College won the tournament.
But, that wasn’t the only win for Lundstrom. In the days leading up to the competition, there were rumblings of busy students and holiday happenings that led the participants to seek a later date. But after the tournament, whether a team played one game or made it to the finals, the feedback was positive.
“I’ve heard them being like, ‘hey, yeah, we should totally do this in the spring,” Lundstrom said.
Whether or not that happens is still up in the air. But Lundstrom can already see the cultural impact this had on his peers, both in the States and abroad.
“I do think there’s a lot of biases,” Lundstrom said.
He said that students were not aware of where Mahomet or Champaign were on a map; and some even asked where Chicago was in relation to New York, but they were interested in American politics and music.
“They were all really curious about what we saw,” he said.
“It was nice to see a lot of the freshmen on the scholastic team ask them questions.”
Opening up the world to his teammates in this way was important to Lundstrom. Spending the year in Chile really opened his eyes, he said.
“It totally changed my perspective,” Lundstrom said. “I’m pretty much a completely different person coming out of that.”
Aside from being immersed in the Spanish language, Lundstrom took away an appreciation for new perspectives and cultures. The experience also helped him compare American and Spanish learning styles, both of which he likes.
While there, though, he said that the internal changes of being drawn into independent learning, becoming more interested in reading and fostering a desire to interact with new people have and will continue to serve him well.
At home, Lundstrom has enjoyed his time on the Mahomet-Seymour scholastic bowl team, working with fellow senior captains: Matthew Bledsoe, Adian Trevillian, Ella Tietz and Colin Diercks since junior high school. Lundstrom said he has enjoyed the jokes over obscure facts and the requirement to study something that may not be offered in depth during the school day.
The opportunity to play in an international scholastic bowl tournament may be a one-time opportunity. It also may be a new experience that schools take out of the forced modifications during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Lundstrom, though, connecting people who have similar interests but live thousands of miles apart is something that will mark his final year at Mahomet-Seymour High School.
