optimistbrainbowl – optimistbrainbowl

2025 Optimist Brain Bowl

Team Registrations Are Now Open!

$75 per Team
Deadline December 1, 2024

Late registrations may or may not be admitted, however, all teams registering
after December 1 will be subject to the $15 late fee.

Late Registration: $90 per Team

No refunds will be made after December 1 unless the tournament has been cancelled.

The Optimist Brain Bowl is a team quiz competition for middle school students in 6th, 7th and 8th grades from schools in Colorado and Wyoming. Optimist Brain Bowl teams compete by grade level. In addition to regional tournament awards for the top four teams in each level, the top nine teams in each grade level at each regional tournament are invited to participate in the Optimist Brain Bowl Championship Tournament.

For more information contact the Brain Bowl Director.

Optimist Brain Bowl History

The Optimist Brain Bowl was created in 1982 by the Buckingham Square Optimist Club. Modeled after the television game “College Bowl,” the club invited middle school students from the Aurora Public Schools that their club served. The small competition was met with enthusiasm from students, teachers, parents and volunteers.

After sharing their success with other clubs in the Colorado-Wyoming Optimist district, the Optimist Brain Bowl began having clubs invite teams from the schools that they served. In 2000, the Optimist Brain Bowl began a district-wide marketing campaign. Over the following years, the competition grew to three regional tournaments and in 2012 the Championship Tournament was added. Up through the 2020 tournament season, the Optimist Brain Bowl served over 1200 middle school students per year making it the largest youth project in the Colorado-Wyoming Optimist District. In 2021, we launched the Optimist Brain Bowl Virtual Tournament for 44 teams from 20 schools staffed by 67 Optimist member volunteers! Since the pandemic, Brain Bowl has reorganized the regional boundaries to accommodate two Regional Tournaments and the Championship Tournament.

Optimist Brain Participants

The Optimist Brain Bowl is for middle school students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Teams consist of up to 6 students with no more than 5 team members competing in any given round. Teams play 4 team-to-team rounds and one written round in the morning to qualify for elimination rounds in the afternoon. Schools may enter up to 9 nine teams in their regional tournament. Teams may not have team members in grades lower than 6th grade or higher than 8th grade. Only teams from Colorado and Wyoming may participate in Optimist Brain Bowl tournaments.

There are two regional tournaments in the Optimist Brain Bowl. The North Region Optimist Brain Bowl serves students who live in northern Colorado and all of Wyoming. The Central Region Optimist Brain Bowl tournament invites schools from central Colorado, the Denver Metro area, mountain areas and the front range south to the New Mexico border. A list of school district assignments is included on the individual Regional Tournament pages.

Optimists & Volunteers

The Optimist Brain Bowl is the largest local youth project that the Colorado-Wyoming Optimist District produces and supports! Every Optimist member in our district is encouraged to volunteer at least one tournament. Each tournament requires approximately 1.5 volunteers per team that enters. In our largest tournaments this sometimes means up to 150 volunteers! Members of the community are also invited to participate in our large variety of volunteer positions. Competition room volunteers consist of a Reader, a Timekeeper and a Scorekeeper. Other positions include score runners, score room volunteers and concessions.

Volunteering for Optimist Brain Bowl tournaments is not only fun and satisfying work but includes a lot of interaction with kids and members of the different Optimist clubs. The Optimist Brain Bowl is a perfect introduction to Optimism and the important work that each of the clubs in the Colorado-Wyoming District strives to do within our communities.