This is something that Mrs. Olinski, the paraplegic
teacher who teaches and selects the Souls, the four children who form her academic bowl
team, is never really able to understand herself. However, as her team become more and
more successful it becomes more and more important to have a number of good, acceptable
responses up her sleeve to be able to explain her selection, even when those answers
aren't necessarily the truth. Note how the novel begins by focusing on
this:
Mrs. Eva
Marie Olinski always gave good answers. Whenever she was asked hwo she had selected her
team for the Academic Bowl, she chose one of several good answers. Most often she said
that the four members of her team had skills that balanced one another. That was
reasonable. Sometimes she said that she kenew her team would practice. That was
accurate.
However neither of
these answers, nor the other answers that she variously gives, such as wanting an
ethnically diverse team, is the truth, and these various answers seem to highlight the
intuition or the hunch that went in to her selection of the team that managed to triumph
so spectacularly.
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