The Medical Lake High School Knowledge Bowl team didn’t come home empty handed after they took third place at the Washington State XXXIII Knowledge Bowl championships, March 14 at Arlington High School.
The competition began with a written round of 50 multiple-choice questions with a 35-minute time limit, followed by four preliminary oral exam rounds consisting of 50 questions each.
“It’s kind of like team ‘Jeopardy,’ except you cannot pick your categories,’” Virgina Luhn, one of the team’s advisors said.
At the end of five rounds, Medical Lake advanced to the semi-finals where they advanced to the championship rounds, which are also 50 questions each. Medical Lake finished with eight points, one behind second-place Cashmere.
Prior to state, Medical Lake competed in four practice meets and then finished first in the 1A division at the Educational Service Districts 101 (Northeast Washington) regional Knowledge Bowl competition back in February. The team competed in the 2014 state championships but didn’t advance past the preliminary rounds.
The students weren’t the only ones excited about competing at state. The school gave the team a surprise sendoff on the morning of March 13, minutes before they started the road trip to Arlington.
“The district is very supportive of us,” Luhn said. “What we need, we get. It’s nice to bring a trophy back to show.”
The team’s season started in October. Luhn said many of the students are motivated and studied specific topics, as well as general knowledge in the offseason.
“A lot of what they study is what they learned in school and they take it beyond,” Luhn said.
The team loses five seniors to graduation: Justin Brundage, Stephanie Burris, Logan Earl, Austin Kepner and Josh Miller.
“I’m very privileged to be able to coach kids likes this,” Luhn said. “We’ll miss our seniors, but we have a good group of sophomores and juniors coming up. We should be back at state next year.”
Al Stover can be reached at al@cheneyfreepress.com.
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