ESU 8 May Be The 'Best Kept Secret In Antelope County'

It was a pleasant surprise.

After an extensive renovation of the Educational Service Unit 8 in Neligh, the project ran one month ahead of schedule.

Not only was this good news to the staff, but it also allowed ESU8 to host their first events this week— the annual junior high and high school quiz bowl competitions.

The junior high contest was held on Tuesday and the high school is on Wednesday. And, with the addition of the new conference room, it will all be held in one building. With the exception of last year when the high school event was held at the Northeast campus in O’Neill due to the renovation project, the quiz bowl took place at both the Neligh Legion and the ESU.

“This year with the conference room, we’re going to have it all at the ESU building,” said Marlin Seevers, ESU technology technician and quiz bowl coordinator. “We’re really looking forward to it because we won’t have students out on the streets between competition rooms. Being in one building and being on one floor will be so much more convenient. There will be less time lost in the transitions.”

Seevers said the junior high contest had 26 teams registered this year, the highest number of teams since he started directing the quiz bowl in 2012. The high school quiz bowl has 23 teams registered for the event.

The high school quiz bowl is in its 30th year, beginning in 1989, he said. The junior high contest started up the year after. The top two teams in the high school division advance to state competition.

Former ESU 8 employee Nigel Buss and others from the ESU in Holdrege came up with the concept for a statewide contest, he said. Seevers took over after Buss retired due to his experience as a parent and coach.

“My sons were both in junior high quiz bowl and I coached them at their Norfolk school,” he said.

Seevers said he has made a few changes since he started directing the quiz bowl. The competition originally started out as a single-elimination contest in one room. He has turned it into a double-elimination event, which is held in four rooms.

“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the coaches for expanding to a double-elimination,” Seevers said. “As a parent and as a coach, there’s a lot of chance involved and you could be one and done, but now they come knowing they’re getting at least two matches.”

However, he said since that “doubles the day,” having four rooms is important.


“Four rooms means recruiting more people,” Seevers said. “We couldn’t do it without the high quality of staff and volunteers that do an excellent job. The feedback that I get is that they love being around the kids that are in the competition. I just appreciate them. I delegate to them because I can’t be running all four rooms.”

He said “one of the biggest jobs” is being a reader for the quiz bowl.

“They study the questions ahead of time, they anticipate answers and together they agree on a ruling,” Seevers said. “They agree together so we have consistency in all four rooms.”

From the beginning, he said they’ve used a “lock-out buzzer system,” designed by a Minden teacher, but they have added four sets since he took over and changed the equipment a bit.

“It was set for four players per team and that’s all the buzzers there were, so I expanded it to six because that’s the way they do it at state,” he said. “So I’ve been trying to match the way state does it, so our teams have minimal adjustment, and I liked having more players play.”

Seevers said the main thing he has changed is the addition of a bracket spreadsheet, which is synchronized for all the rooms.

“We’ve gone to a shared spreadsheet that I wrote and designed,” he said. “So that it’s posted and shows as soon as a round has finished.”

His passion for the ESU quiz bowl competition is evident.

“I really feel it’s important that there be competition for academics for schools,” Seevers said. “It’s one of the things that’s important to me and I try to express that in the way that we’ve designed it.”

The quiz bowl competitions are a very small part of the services that ESU 8 offers its schools. Administrator Bill Mowinkel said they serve 19 public and 20 parochial schools.

In ESU’s day-to-day operations, he said the staff developers train teachers and help with continuous school improvement, nurses provide care in the schools, technicians keep technology running smoothly, media coordinators help provide distance learning, speech pathologists and psychologists offer specialized help and a large number of staff members are dedicated to special education and serving ESU8’s four learning centers.

Mowinkel said one area the general public may not be familiar with is their coop purchase service.
“It’s all done online through the ESU,” he said. “You’ve got to go through your ESU to participate. You can buy paper, food, cleaning supplies, computers, vans—you can buy just about anything.”

Mowinkel said it’s “a catalog of thousands of items” bought collectively through the state.

“And then we team with five other ESUs, so we help all of Northeast Nebraska through the Northeast Network Consortium,” he said. “We work together. There is strength in bidding with volume.”

Mowinkel said many don’t realize how important the ESU is in the area.

“We’re probably the biggest kept secret in Antelope County,” he said.