When the smoke cleared Saturday night at the end of the fourth Granville Rotary Trivia Night, a new team reigned supreme as the epitome of all things trivia in Granville.
The Slate Valley Slaters, a team representing the Slate Valley Museum, knocked off the defending and past champion team from the Granville Small Animal Hospital to give the event its third champion in four years.
A new high of 19 teams sought the title of masters of the miniscule, one more than any of the previous three events raising funds for local charitable work by the Rotary.
“We were delighted with the turnout,” Granville Rotary President Steve Williams said afterward. “It was nice to see everyone having a good time of it and personally I found it very challenging.”
Event founder Charla Jennings said everything about the night is satisfying for her, even when teams contest answers or questions.
“It’s fun to see people, as much as it’s a pain in the neck, coming over to (dispute) a question, it shows that they are involved and that they care about how they’re doing,” Jennings said.
Although she had not done any analysis of the scoring, scores for the teams appeared to have a higher average and lows were not as low as past events. Jennings said four or five teams were out in front but the majority of teams were bunched up with no real stragglers.
Granville Village Board member Brian LaRose once again donated his services as emcee and reader of the questions for the evening.
Jennings said she enjoyed watching the reaction of the teams and the crowd as a whole when LaRose reviewed each round’s questions before starting the next round. “It’s fun to see the whole crowd kind of sigh together or to hear and answer make its way around the room,” she said.
The Slate Valley Slaters are Orson Kingsley, Jonathan Hill, John Shaw, Maureen Hill, David Bridges and Dave Whitman. The winning team received T-shirts from the Rotary Club, director’s chairs from Telescope Casual Furniture and a free pass into next year’s event as well as its name on the trivia night trophy.
A new wrinkle in the contest had a showdown between Rotary clubs as the Poultney Rotary sponsored a team. The announced contest had the two teams competing for a trophy to be retained by the highest scoring of the two groups. Trivia fans will have to wait until next year for a resolution to the issue, however, as with all points accounted for at the end of the night the two teams were tied.
The Slate Valley Slaters: Dave Whitman, Rotary President Steve Williams, Jonathan Hill, Maureen Hill, Orson Kingsley, John Shaw and David Bridges came from behind to win the 2011 charity trivia tournament. Jan. 22, 2011.