Scholar's Bowl

As we have entered into Junior High or Middle School homeschooling, I am discovering new opportunities.  Our local Christian school has invited my son to participate in sports and other exta-curricular activities.  The one we are currently doing is Scholar's Bowl.  I've never explored it before and it is interesting.  The first meet is next Monday and my boy has only gotten to be in on one practice.  He came home only getting one answer correct.  This was a little surprising to me, because my kids are good students.
This morning, I opened up a webpage of Middle School scholar's bowl type questions and began to read them aloud to see how many things they could answer.  I have seen the show, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, and I am sometimes smarter than a 5th grader, but I'm not a scholar's bowl champ!  We are not sports fans and couldn't answer any of the sport questions.  We rarely watch television and therefore don't get much NEWS.  I prefer to read the NEWS and that makes my kids' knowledge of current events minimal.  We've talked about weather and ebola and some other things, but what this politician says about that one, thankfully, is NOT filling our home.  I do confess Redbox, Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video are our friends.
We could answer correctly about jet streams, solar panels, the crusades and the capital of Quebec.  My kids didn't know who Andy Warhol is and the clue was his prints of Marilyn Monroe.  They don't know her either.  So am I a failure as a homeschool teacher?  I believe, NO!  Here is why.  IF I were raising my kids to be what's his name that won Jeopardy so many times in a row, then I am failing.  I'm not!  I'm teaching my children to have good character even though some days no one could tell.  I am teaching them how to read and write and do math and know the history of the world and where in the world to find Carman San Diego. (not exactly)  I'm not indoctrinating them in theology, but letting them read the Bible for themselves and discuss it with me.  They have to try foreign food ... even if I don't cook it right.  They have to participate in house work and just suffered through the punishment of no movies or shows until their rooms were clean INCLUDING under their beds.  Oh the horror! 
The truth is that I have very few adult friends who could win at trivial pursuit if they didn't have a team.  Random facts won't determine our eternity and so while it is fun to learn trivia, it really is trivial in the grand scheme of things.  We will continue with scholar's bowl as long as they allow us to participate because I don't think its wrong.  I just don't want to base my success or failure or that of my children on how many of the questions they got right.  Did they learn something?  I hope so!  That will be a reward.