Garretson teacher gets ready to try her skill in second national game show appearance

UPDATE: Kelsey Buchholz did not appear on the Oct. 1 episode, so she’ll have another chance Oct. 8.

When did Kelsey Buchholz’s love for game shows begin?

Early in her childhood.

“I distinctly remember getting off the bus and racing down the driveway,” she said. “I’d meet Mom and watch ‘Jeopardy!’ with her. I remember going to my grandma’s house. She had cable, and we’d watch old reruns of ‘Press Your Luck’ together. I’d go to my other grandma’s house, and I’d watch ‘Wheel of Fortune’ with her. Game shows are something I always really loved.”

When did her competitive spirit surface?

That was early, too, and it has never left her.

“In literally everything, I am full force. Let’s do it if we’re going to do it,” Buchholz said.

Buchholz’s first game-show experience came nine years ago when she was a contestant on “Wheel of Fortune.” Her second experience came earlier this year when she spent a week in Dublin, Ireland, taping episodes of the Fox game show “The Floor.”

The fourth season began last week. Buchholz was shown several times during the show, cheering on the other 99 contestants but never competed.

That could change this Wednesday when the second episode of the Rob Lowe-hosted game show airs at 7 p.m. — it is available on Hulu the next day. According to an episode guide, this Wednesday a “professional wrestler, a Brad Pitt doppelganger and a Georgia Peach duel it out.”

Buchholz is none of the above. That doesn’t mean it won’t be her turn to compete against fellow contestants for a possible $20,000 prize that night and the chance to go on to win $250,000. She’s just not allowed to say how many appearances she will make.

What she can say is that appearing on “The Floor” was stressful — in the best way possible.

“The stress was completely real,” Buchholz said. “It was a weird combination, flying halfway around the world, you’re jet-lagged, your nerves and your energies drain your body, you’re eating food you’re not used to and you’re cramming for different categories. The stress is real — 100 percent.”

This year, “The Floor” brought in 100 contestants, two from each of the 50 states. When the game begins, the contestants are standing on a floor arranged in a 10-by-10 grid. Each grid displays a trivia category. When a contestant is chosen at random, he or she selects one of the boxes next to their square. Then, those two contestants face each other in a “duel,” when they must identify images on a large screen.

Each contestant starts with 45 seconds. Wrong guesses or passing on a guess deletes from the total. The winner is the person ending with the most time. That person is awarded the losing contestant’s square, giving them more total space. The contestant with the most spaces at the episode’s end won $40,000 the first night and will win $20,000 on other nights.

However, the winning contestant doesn’t have to play again. He or she can return to the floor and wait to be summoned back to a duel.

In the first week, “the Randomizer” picked a square where a Texas contestant stood. His own category was “Wild West,” and he chose the neighboring square labeled “Fried Foods.” He then faced off against that contestant, who happened to be from Wisconsin.

The winner chose to return to the floor, so the next duel involved contestants from Vermont and Georgia. By the end of the episode, there had been eight duels. With eight contestants eliminated, only 92 will appear on Wednesday’s episode.

And Buchholz will be there, ready to either defend her category of “Holiday Foods” or see if her cramming for the other categories has paid off.

Rochelle Boote and Buchholz have been friends — and sometimes competitors in athletics — since 2004 when they met as first-year students at Augustana College (now University). They lived on the same dormitory floor and met at a Spanish test before the fall semester began, but their friendship was cemented on the sand volleyball court on campus.

“After that, we started hanging out all the time,” Boote said. “She would work at the front desk to check in visitors, and I would sit by her to keep her company, and we would sing along to music and sometimes do homework.”

Boote watched last week’s episode. “The Floor” is ideal as a showcase for her friend’s personality, competitive while supporting others to do their best, she said.

“Her reactions are so genuine, and I can just hear her in my head cheering for the other competitors when they struggled or lost. Especially when the woman from Minnesota went home, I could tell how sad Kelsey was for her,” Boote said. “I loved seeing her excitement as the floor lit up.”

Liz Etrheim has taught in the Garretson School District for more than seven years. She has played on the same volleyball team as Buchholz, and her friend is a natural coach and leader, Etrheim said.

“She likes to know exact rules for everything,” she said. “She loves that thrill of competition and just being challenged that way.”

Etrheim and other elementary school teachers played against Buchholz and high school teachers in a group activity involving a medicine-ball game, using smaller balls to move a larger one.

“Each player had to try to get the big ball onto the opposite side,” Etrheim recalls. “She took charge and led the way with that and ended up winning for the high school team against the elementary teachers.”

At Garretson High School, Buchholz teaches English and math, is head golf coach and adviser to the school newspaper and yearbook. She received her master’s degree in education from Southwest Minnesota State University in 2013 and her Ed.D. in school leadership and sports leadership from the University of North Dakota in 2023.

A native of Barnesville, Minnesota, Buchholz and her husband, Cory, have been married for 16 years. They are the parents of Colton, a freshman; Caylix, a seventh grader; Coyer, a fifth grader; and 3-year-old Kenley. After briefly working in marketing and advertising after graduating from Augustana, she taught at Washington High School in Sioux Falls for four years and now Garretson for 13 years.

Over the summer, Buchholz and her three sons engage in a board-game competition, trying to play each one they own. That ranges from Candy Land to Risk. They keep track of who wins what.

“Competition and games are a part of our family and a part of me,” Buchholz said.

She also tries to play a lot of games in her classroom. Those contests are light-hearted and fun, giving students a chance to bond over friendly competition.

Buchholz’s first competition in a nationally televised game show came when she competed on the iconic “Wheel of Fortune.” That episode aired in January 2016. It was overwhelming to meet host Pat Sajak and letter-turner Vanna White, the two people she had watched in front of her grandmother’s TV set.

“Wheel of Fortune” contestants play for only one episode, and everyone goes home with the money they earned. Buchholz went through the whole range of possibilities in her appearance.

“I solved a puzzle, I tried to solve a puzzle and was incorrect, I picked something off the wheel, and I landed on bankrupt and had to give it back,” she said. “I won over $7,500.”

That experience gave her some assurance when taping began on “The Floor,” although the games have little in common. On “The Floor,” it’s “do or die” because losing a duel means immediate banishment from the competition.

“Out of 100 people, you’ve got a 1 percent shot of winning,” Buchholz said. “We’re into it for the experience, and if you go home with ($20,000), that’s great. Our cast is here for the relationships we built.”

She made great friendships during the week in Dublin, Buchholz said, but almost everyone remained on a first-name basis. She knows the other South Dakota contestant lives in Brookings, owns a bar with her husband and is named Kristi. Turns out it’s Kristi Raab, co-owner of Pints & Quarts with her husband, Kevin. She has not yet appeared on “The Floor.”

“The Floor” has an intensive casting process. Hopefuls submit photos and suggest possible categories for the competition. One of Buchholz’s fellow competitors is married to a woman who works for Mattel; his category is “Mattel Toys.” Another friend was randomly assigned the category “Terms of Endearment.”

Buchholz didn’t choose “Holiday Foods” as a category, but her application may have led to that selection. She applied near Christmas 2024, and she told the selectors how she makes lefse every holiday with her mother and a younger sister. One of the pictures she submitted showed her in a Mrs. Claus apron with her sons in elf aprons.

Etrheim wrote a letter of recommendation for her friend, knowing only that it was for a game show. When Buchholz returned in late April, Etrheim asked, “Where were you? Why were you over in Ireland?” “I can’t tell you,” Buchholz teased, “but it’s big and huge.”

The Buchholz family has watched “The Floor” in its earlier seasons together, enjoying calling out the answers. When her first episode aired last week, by choice it was just the family in front of the television again. Her sons, especially, were excited to see their mother on the show.

Buchholz describes watching the initial episode as a little overwhelming.

“It brought back all of the memories and stress you were feeling when it happened,” she said. “I joked that I had the best seat in the house, smack dab in the middle. It will be really fun now to express my gratitude for having the opportunity to be on the show, to be able to share with my loved ones. When I went to Dublin, I told my parents, but I didn’t tell my little sister or my brothers or my best friends. I hope people think I represented myself accurately and made my family and friends proud and I was also a good representative for the state of South Dakota.”

Even without seeing the final 11 episodes, Boote knows that Buchholz did just that.

“Kelsey is one of the kindest humans I know. She excels at bringing out the best in other people whether it is a sport or a game or life in general,” Boote said. “She wants others to do the best they can and is proud of that effort.

“She is the best type of teammate. She is very competitive, but she never directs that competitive spirit to her teammates. She is great at bringing out the best in her teammates. Most really competitive people are hard to play with and belittle others, but Kelsey is the exact opposite. She wants to win, and her personality and actions help others to do their best in a happy and positive way. Everyone wants to be on Kelsey’s team.”