email: ckoplien@todaystmj4.com
I didn't go to lose.
It was "Trivia Night" the other night at our church. The school's gym was filled with 26 teams of 10 people, battling for the coveted title of St. Dominic Trivia Night Champions. (Actually, I think some just came to eat and drink.)
Out team was expertly crafted by Molly Schmidt. She skillfully built our team, a la how Ron Wolf built the Packers in the early 90s. We were strong on both sides of the ball, er, table...with a solid mix of men and women, experience and expertise.
And, of course, there was no shortage of questions from people asking me why I was there...since I "don't know anything". (Get it? I'm the weatherman? And I always get the forecast wrong? That's fresh people. Nice.)
Our team consisted of:
1. Molly Schmidt...Team architect and CEO.
2. Ted Schmidt...Husband of team architect, teacher, owner of many bobbleheads.
3 & 4. Kathy & Gerry Monday...Mom and Dad of team architect, contenders for title of "nicest people we know".
5 & 6. Howard & Mary Ann Fleischmann...Friends, neighbors and also contenders for title of "nicest people we know".
7. Brian Schreiber...Anesthesiologist (yep, we had a doctor.)
8. Jennifer Schreiber...Pediatrician (yep, TWO doctors!) Also, pregnant.
9. Maureen Koplien...Teacher, expert in putting up with me.
10. Me...Among the league-leaders in knowing useless information.
The game went like this: Ten rounds/categories...each with 10 questions. A perfect score was 100.
Our team jumped out to an early lead sweeping (I think) the first category, "Famous TV Moms". We hit the ground running getting answers like Ann Romano from "One Day at a Time", Shirley Patridge from "The Partridge Family", and Caroline Ingalls from "Little House on the Prairie".
Category number two was "Famous Seconds"...like, Who was the second President? (John Adams), Who was the only horse to finish second in all 3 legs of horse racing's Triple Crown (Alydar), and who finished second in the first season of "American Idol" (Justin Guarini).
Other categories included...
James Bond
U.S. Vacation Spots
Islands
Commercial Jingles
St. Paul (The actual Saint...not the city. It was church trivia night, after all.) (And of course, that was our worst category.) (We did 10 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers to make up for it.)
After 10 rounds, we had a score of 85...out of a possible 100.
Second place was 83.
We win!
After taking the early lead, we never took our foot off the gas. A team or two may have tied us at one point, but we never relinquished the lead. It wasn't exactly like how the Packers demolished the Bears yesterday, but we were in control throughout.
Here is some photographic documentation of the evening...
Here is our team seated around our birthday-themed table. (Three in our group had birthdays within a couple days of Saturday.) From the front and then around clockwise: Kathy Monday, Molly Schmidt, Maureen Koplien, Me, Ted Schmidt, Gerry Monday, Howard Fleischmann, Brian Schreiber, Jennifer Schreiber, Mary Ann Fleischmann.
Here are the birthday-three...Mary Ann, Maureen and Ted.
Here's Maureen and me during one of the 2 intermissions. During the first intermission, there was a Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament...and during the second there was a Heads-or-Tails tournament. I went out in the first round of both.
Here we are in the front of the room just after being presented with our championship medals! (We were table 20...you can't quite see our scores.) (Maureen, wrong camera.)
Here's Ted and I right after we stepped down from the podium, having our "We going to DisneyWorld"-moment.
Interestingly, our friends Stacy and Joe Pink called Maureen and me about 3 hours prior to the competition. They asked us to be on their team, not knowing that we were already attending. Following our first place finish this year, I'm expecting Maureen and I will be in even greater demand next year. I anticipate a "CC Sabathia"-type offer coming our way. (Sorry, Joe, no hometown discount. And we want a multi-year deal.)
