Colorado Knowledge Bowl History

It started out as another pretty much ordinary day back in the early 1970s, but then something extraordinary happened. Out of the blue, six Durango High School students converged at the San Juan BOCES director's office with an idea.

What they asked was that in addition to the athletic competitions at their high school they wanted to see and participate in some kind of academic competition that would put some of the terrific students into the spotlight and give them a chance to find out just how they might stack up compared to other schools in the neighborhood. That turned out to be the birth of Colorado Knowledge Bowl.

A few weeks later, with the authorization of the BOCES board and superintendents, a little 4-team event involving Durango, Pagosa, Bayfield, and Ignacio was staged at the Pagosa Lodge. The BOCES came up with some questions and the original event had each team play each other team once. Nobody in the area had ever heard of timer response units, so the event was based on who raised a hand first to answer. Each room had an administrator who was to determine whose hand went up first. Of course, nobody anticipated just how sharp the students would be, especially when multiple hands would reach for the sky milliseconds apart with practically every question. Regardless of that, everybody had a terrific time and all agreed that with a few adjustments, this activity could have a future.

A second meet was planned for later in the year, and this time, Leonard Hammock, the Southwest BOCES director in the Cortez area along with his superintendents and board asked if they could also participate. So, that next meet was the first "regional" knowledge bowl meet in the state. This time, there were 12 teams, and that is where the three-team per room setup began. This meet also featured the ‘spiffy new’ Quiztrons that were custom made for the event by a Texas electronics outfit.

The third event was held the following year featuring another refinement. Unlike the first meets in which teams were randomly assigned to rooms, the Pagosa superintendent Terry Alley suggested there ought to be some way to ensure that an especially strong team not get paired with a weaker team at the outset. Such a pairing resulted in the strong team getting an insurmountable lead at the end of the first round. This was where the idea of the written round was introduced as a way of determining which teams would be initially assigned to rooms and where the concept of a power tournament was born; each team score was cumulative throughout the event and room assignments were based on total accumulated points at the end of each round so teams always played other teams of comparable demonstrated ability.

Word of the event started getting around the state, largely due to the BOCES Association meetings, and soon the plans were laid for the first Colorado Knowledge Bowl to be held at Fort Lewis College under the auspices of the BOCES. The historical record does not show what hoops each team from throughout the state had to go through to qualify. This was all still experimental (pretty much!). The college president, Rexer Berndt, made a fabulous and genuinely heartfelt welcoming address to the teams, and thus started the two-day event, capped by the final round read by Governor Dick Lamm, who also presided over the awards ceremony for the division and overall winners. Thus, the concept of the Governor’s Cup was born for the overall champion of Colorado Knowledge Bowl.

Hosted and organized by several key people, and practically without any outside financial support, there has been a Colorado Knowledge Bowl every year since in addition to loads of regional, league, and invitational meets held annually involving thousands of Colorado's finest young scholars. None of this would have been possible without the care, support and the ‘labor of love’ by an array of terrific individual teachers who organize the teams, arrange for practices, host events, and do all the unsung legwork to make this kind of activity possible.

Over the years quite a few educational leaders from other states have come to see the Colorado Knowledge Bowl and have established what have become long-standing statewide events in many other parts of the country based on this format. It is ‘right amazing’ to think all of this started with an idea from a half-dozen high school students some four decades ago. In 2021, the first Knowledge Bowl National Tournament was held showcasing the top teams from Minnesota, Washington and Colorado using an online format. These teams had played in similar formats using a common question provider so a combined national tournament using slightly modified rules from each state and the question support of Question Authorities® was possible. The national tournament was largely hosted by Colorado with active support from Knowledge Bowl organizations in Minnesota and Washington. The quality and capability of the teams brought hope of evenly contested national meets in the future.

Colorado Knowledge Bowl, also known as the state tournament, had a tournament site at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO for years before moving to Adams State in Alamosa, CO during the 1990's. After the tenure at Adams State, Colorado Knowledge Bowl moved to Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO for well over a decade. In 2016, the tournament moved to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO where a partnership with the Admissions Office provided low-cost access to great facilities. The tournament timing was shifted from mid-April to mid-March to take advantage of the available facilities during the university spring break. Colorado State also provided enhanced wireless access that made electronic posting of scores and automatic push notifications to cell phones, tablets and computers a welcome reality for the first time in 2018. Teams were relieved of the need to monitor a physical score posting site to get updates for the start of the next round. In 2023 after severe impacts by the COVID-19 pandemic (online only tournaments for 2021 and 2022 with a complete cancellation in 2020), our state tournament moved to Greeley for one year at UNC before moving into a long-term partnership with AIMS Community College. The event was embraced by AIMS as a highly desired community engagement event. Colorado Knowledge Bowl was provided access to facilities that equaled or exceeded anything from previous hosting sites along with full-service hospitality services during the spring break term when the college had available space to host the tournament.

In 2018, for the first time, Colorado Knowledge Bowl scholarships for entry into Colorado State University were awarded to each class championship team for a team member or a school mate starting their college career. The University of Northern Colorado, in 2019, in a similar nod to the excellent potential of Knowledge Bowl competitors, provided Colorado Knowledge Bowl scholarships for entry at UNC to each class championship team. Thus, in 2019, each class championship team received two $1000 scholarships. In 2024, AIMS Community College became an additional scholarship sponsor with their first $2500 award to an entering student. Further, in 2024, the scholarship awards were expanded to include any student or team member from those schools who qualified for the state tournament. Winners were selected from online applications. Entering the 2025 competition year, Colorado Knowledge Bowl remains an excellent way to develop recall and command of widespread knowledge while having a great time in a collegial academic competition.