Sponsored by the Holstein Foundation, Dairy Bowl contests contain four person teams who answer questions on dairy-related topics. Juniors must be knowledgeable of such subjects as animal breeding, genetics, herd health, nutrition, record keeping and Holstein history. Each year, the Dairy Bowl finals are held in conjunction with the Holstein Association USA, Inc.’s National Convention. State teams compete for national recognition and awards in junior and senior divisions.

Juniors have the opportunity to make rewarding friendships and gain knowledge about their industry. This fact sheet will help serve as a guideline to organizing a dairy bowl program on a variety of levels.

Finding Competitors	Preparing for Competition
Selecting the Team	The Contest
Winning a Championship	Deadlines for Entry

The dairy bowl program is set up for anyone who has an interest in the dairy industry. Dairy bowl gives youth the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the industry in many different areas, while enhancing their competition skills.

In the Holstein Foundation dairy bowl program there are two divisions: Junior and Senior. Juniors are under the age of sixteen as of January 1 of the current year and Seniors are under 21 by the same date. Competitors are eligible to compete three times at the national convention in each age division.

Preparing for Competition

Now that you have found a group of youth interested in competing, they need to start learning and sharing information. One way to start is by having the group share some of their experiences they have learned growing up in the industry. Youth have a wealth of information in their mind just from working with their projects. By sharing these experiences they can learn information from each other and know what areas each person is interested in.

A great way to prepare for the contest is to get sets of practice questions from past contests. Questions can be obtained by talking to teams who have competed or contest officials from past events. If potential team members practice who can answer the questions first, they will be prepared for the questions during real competition. It is extremely beneficial to practice with a set of competition buzzers.

To prepare for the questions that will be covered in upcoming competitions, the team must study other sources besides old questions. Some previous questions will come up each year, but the dairy industry is always changing. Studying current issues of industry publications allow the well prepared teams to rise to the top. For the Holstein contest new questions for each year are taken from the past June to May issues of Dairy Herd Management, Hoard’s Dairyman, Holstein World, Holstein News, Sire Summaries, Holstein Foundation Workbooks, etc.

If the youth divide the number of issues among themselves, the sources can be covered without every team member reading each magazine. Each teammate should be responsible for knowing his or her assigned issues completely and also report to the rest of the team the general information. One way to use information gathered from these issues is to create competition-like questions. This helps build a stronger team because each teammate knows general information from the entire year and one team member is well educated in that area. In addition, they know who to rely on for certain answers, giving them more confidence and greater ability to work as a team.

Selecting the Team

When you have large groups of interested youth members, a system will need to be set up to determine team members. Each team consists of three or four members and an alternate. There are various ways to select the team that will represent your group in county, district, state, or national competitions.

One way is to select the team strictly by a written exam. This gives you the best test takers, although keep in mind some people do better on tests and freeze in competition.

The written exam can also be combined with an oral competition. The exam could be used to determine the top eight or ten members and then an oral round could be implemented to determine the top three or four and an alternate.

Another approach would be to let the members choose teams and run a contest among those teams. The contest would need to parallel the national contest. The winner of this round robin would be the team to send to further contests, while the other teams could continue to practice and work together to beat the first place team in future years. Reinforce the fact that they are all winners, no matter who goes on to further competitions. If they feel like failures they are less likely to continue to be involved and practice.

It is beneficial to use the older members when it is time to choose a team. The younger members have additional years to use their eligibility and would also benefit from more years of practice. Younger members would be more prepared when they are older than the older member is at the time of the contest.

The Contest

The contest is structured in a round robin double elimination format. A 25 question written exam is taken to determine the positions for the first round. After the first round is completed, a loss bracket is formed. Each team must lose twice to be eliminated from the contest. The undefeated team in the winner’s bracket will face the surviving team in the loss bracket. In the final round, if the loss bracket team beats the undefeated team, another match will be played. Whoever loses this match is eliminated and the winner takes the title.

Once the teams are seeded from the written test, round one begins. The team members combined score is used to determine position. Each round consists of two phases. In phase A, teams are brought in the room individually. Both teams are asked the same set of questions. Each team member is asked three ten point questions. The member asked the question must answer within five seconds. There is no penalty for unanswered questions or incorrect answers and no help from teammates.

Phase B is the toss-up round. The contestant who rings in first is called on by the moderator. He or she is given ten seconds to answer the question for fifteen points. When a question is answered incorrectly there is a ten point penalty. There is no help from team members in this section. Phase B also contains a bonus section where questions are worth fifteen points. A bonus is given to a team when three different members answer a question correctly in phase B. On bonus questions the team is allowed to confer and the team captain gives the answer. It is necessary for team members to have confidence in each others ability to answer the questions. Remember that when two teammates answer most of the questions and the other team misses the question to give the other members a chance to answer because it may produce a bonus question in your favor.

Winning a Championship

Although all participants in the dairy bowl program are winners, only one champion can be named in each division. The desire to be national champions comes from within the team. If they have confidence in themselves and each other, they are well on their way to the top.

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