News
Trivia goes up and over the hill
The Pointer
nmeye177@uwsp.edu
“Trivia 40: Here’s Looking At You, Kid” is all set to take place this weekend and is shaping up to be one of the largest turnouts in the history of the contest. Registration began on Monday and the line of eager trivia players was longer than ever this year.
“That was the biggest I’ve ever seen,” said the “face of Trivia,” Jim “OZ” Oliva. “We had 217 teams register yesterday plus the 20 we got online, 6,400 players and about 900 alumni.”
The online teams are going to be playing from all over the world, including a group of soldiers playing in Afghanistan.
“A soldier who is from Point told all the people in his regiment about Trivia and they got pumped on it and they’ve got time to play it so they set up a team,” said 90FM Program Director Jarad Olson. “It’s just really cool that they can take part in it.”
Trivia is what happens when one trivia-crazed man, a motivated student organization and over 11,500 hungry Trivia players collide for one non-stop, insomnia-ridden weekend to take over the city of Stevens Point. Now 40 years from Trivia’s start, Oz returns for another year of madness as he unleashes the indescribable energy of the beast he’s kept alive all these years on the City of Stevens Point.
Trivia has come a long way since its inception and there are many differences between Trivia then and Trivia now.
“Trivia then was wild as can be because you could register at any time; all you had to do was call in and register your team on the phone and so we got this huge registration of teams between 2 and 4 in the morning,” said Oz.
Now the contest is much more organized and calls for a lot more preparation starting months in advance. As soon as the 90FM staff returns from winter break, they begin working on Trivia. They begin getting volunteers, making marquees, writing press releases and doing the underwriting to make sure Trivia is everything the players expect it to be, one crazy ride.
Oz starts preparing for each trivia competition as soon as the previous one ends. His preparation causes him to enjoy the media we enjoy every day in a much different way. A movie, for most, results in a few hours of stimulation; for Oz it results in three pages of notes and hopefully a few questions for the contest still months away.
Starting in January, Oz and his partner John Eckendorf begin writing the 432 questions, plus the running questions, Trivia stone clues and music snippets that run the trivia machine. He doesn’t mind giving up the time a bit.
“It’s almost a thing where if I didn’t do it, I don’t know what else I would do,” said Oz. “You look around and people will say every day I go to the gym or I ride bicycle fanatically and that’s their hobby; I write Trivia.”
The only thing all these teams are fighting for is a chance to claim the champion’s trophy as their own. There is no monetary prize, no extravagant incentive for the winners to grab and take with them-simply pride, a trophy and a whole bunch of fuzzy memories.
“One of the greatest things is when you’re talking about this with someone from out of town and you’re explaining the contest. They’ll say to you, what does the first place team win? You say, ‘a trophy,’ and they say, ‘What, that’s it?’” said Oz.
At the end of the day, the contest is really about 90FM though it has become its own entity. Without the dedicated staff members at 90FM with some help from Oz, there wouldn’t be Trivia, and without Trivia, it’s safe to say 90FM wouldn’t be the largest student-run radio station in the Midwest.
“Trivia runs this station. We wouldn’t be able to have crazy specialty shows, have all this good music to play if it weren’t for all the recognition WWSP gets nationally for holding Trivia,” said Olson.
Still, trivia means more to everyone involved than fundraised dollars or trophies to display. The energy is something no one can realize until they are there, and the friendships, the interaction between teams and the rituals that have sprung up out of this contest are what people intently wait for every year.
“The memories from year to year, getting together with friends, that’s the biggest thing,” said “Ah-Bin Hypmotized” team member Dan Rayburn.
Talking with participants fairly new and old it is safe to say once you take part in Trivia it becomes a part of you.
“You can say over and over the world’s largest trivia contest and it falls on dead ears until someone comes in and they’re working a phone shift,” said Olson. “It’s mass pandemonium for a split second and all within that moment you have a heart attack and then it gets figured out and right at that moment someone walks in and says, ‘Hey pizza’s here. What do you want?’”
The contest starts on Friday with at 6 p.m. You can listen to trivia live on 90FM, stream it live on the Internet at http://www.uwsp.edu/stuorg/wwsp/listenlive.html or watch the 90FM staff in action on Student Television on channel 98.
