Liberty’s dedicated readers competed in and won a trivia competition against Holt and Timberland on March 7. The Battle of the Books is an event where each school has a group of students, who read all 15 Gateway nominees for this year, get quizzed over information from the books.

The first book battle located at Holt was won by Holt, the second was won by Timberland at Liberty and this year the book battle was won by Liberty at Timberland. With this being Liberty’s first year winning the competition, it’s a big accomplishment under their belt.

“I think [the team] was super well prepared and it was great to have several [girls on the team] that had participated for all three years,” librarian Ms. Oliva said.

For seniors Madison McGuire, Arianna Amann and Alisha Grant, it was their third and final time participating in the Battle of the Books. The other members of the team were sophomores Melana Quarles, Dessa Outman, Emma Benesek and junior Ashley Arbesman.

Liberty’s final score was 3050 with Holt in second with 2550 and Timberland in third with 2500. Liberty was in the lead very early on in the competition and once they gained the lead, they kept it for the rest of the book battle.

“We were prepared for some of the rounds which happened to be at the beginning which helped us maintain our constant lead throughout the competition,” McGuire said.

Each girl picked two or three books to focus on for the book battle and each member of the team had the name of a book character on the back of their shirt. The trivia was 10 rounds with 10 questions each. The topics ranged from the names of the authors to information from last year’s Gateway novels. Since there were seven girls on the team, but only five students could be at the buzzers, the girls rotated out every two rounds.

“It was a really stressful time because we had to sub in and out, but we didn’t know the names of the rounds beforehand,” McGuire said.

The winner of the book battle gets to take back to their school the trophy of golden books.

“I’m so glad we were able to win for Ms. Oliva this year. She is such an amazing librarian and definitely deserves to have that trophy in the library. I hope the team can continue to win in the future,” Grant said.

The trophy is being kept in the trophy case at the front of the school and hopefully it will stay there for years to come.