KO’s most recent Faculty Trivia Night was held in person this fall, and faculty members were excited to attend and engage in a night of fun, friendly competition with one another. The event took place outside of Alumni Hall and food was provided by Sage Dining.
Typically, Faculty Trivia Nights are held in the fall and the spring of each school year, but last year, teachers did not have the opportunity to come together in the same way due to social distancing guidelines. Although the experience was very different, the hard work of history Department Chair David Baker and science teacher Kata Baker allowed for multiple virtual Faculty Trivia Nights to occur last year. “We really missed our friends and being involved with the community, so we decided to develop virtual trivia,” Mr. Baker said. This year, faculty members were relieved to attend the event on campus and were eager to connect with one another face-to-face instead of on their computer screens.
Mr. Baker has been involved with this event since its beginnings. He started by working with a Student Trivia Night organized by the Lemkuil family (Andrew ’16, Austin ’16, and Emily ’20) and he enjoyed it so much that he developed a Faculty Trivia Night with former history teacher Jim Weeks. Mr. Baker now organizes and co-hosts the event with Mrs. Baker.
The event’s winners this year were the members of a team named “Unmoored.” The team included English teachers Heidi Hojnicki, Catherine Schieffelin, and Cameron Biondi, Latin teacher Maureen Lamb and her husband, math teacher Denise Garcia, and art teachers Katie Burnett and Scott McDonald. “I think that what helped us win is the fact that we had a really well rounded team,” Mr. McDonald said. “There were also some teams who tried to psych others out and intimidate them, but we just could not be intimidated.”
The trivia was structured in four rounds of five questions each, with a picture-identification round in the middle and an elaborate challenge question for the final round. “Our picture-identification round was kind of a play on the fact that we’ve only been able to host Virtual Trivia Nights the past year and a half,” Mr. Baker said. The round was called “Zoom,” and participants had to identify objects based on zoomed-in photos. “As art teachers, I think that the picture round really played to Ms. Burnett and my strengths,” Mr. McDonald said.
The high-intensity final round required participants to name all of the countries in the Americas that touched the Pacific Ocean from North to South. Teams decided the amount of points they wanted to wager and then lost points for wrong answers. Although they didn’t get this question correct, “Unmoored” believes that their strategy in this round is what ultimately led to their victory. “Going into the final round when you’re asked to wager a percentage of your points, we played it conservatively,” Mr. McDonald explained. “Because we had this strategy, we lost fewer points. Had we wagered all the points we had, we would’ve lost.”
After their win, “Unmoored” was presented with a trophy dubbed “The Baker Cup.” “Mr. Dillow and Ms. Malinoski got this trophy as a surprise for everyone,” Mr. Baker said. “Then they actually went back into the archives and recorded all of the winners of the past Faculty Trivia Nights.”
Although the faculty were competitive when it came to the questions, they also took this as an opportunity to relax and spend memorable time with each other. “Trivia Night is great because it’s a time that Middle School and Upper School faculty get to get together, so you get to be with everyone,” Ms. Burnett said. “It was really nice to just hang out with colleagues and friends in the evening outside of school, and we’re already looking forward to the next one!”
