by Dennis Dalman
news@thenewsleaders.com
One of two Sartell-St. Stephen High School Knowledge Bowl teams will compete in regional competition after winning the sub-regional tournament March 13 at Celebration Lutheran Church in Sartell.
Team 1 beat out 10 other schools in a series of written and oral rounds to be named the champion in Tier III, the category for the largest schools in the area. They will compete in the regionals Tuesday, March 20, also at Celebration Lutheran Church. The winners of that tournament will go on to state competition April 12-13 at Cragun’s Resort near Brainerd.
The annual event is sponsored by Resource Training and Solutions, based in St. Cloud.
The members of Team 1 are Bailey Evenson, Joseph Lawson, Kyle McIlwain and Laura Sompii.
The all-day competition involved teams from high schools in St. Cloud (Apollo and Tech), Sauk Rapids-Rice, Buffalo, Chisago Lakes, Elk River, Monticello, North Branch, Princeton and Rogers.
Schools from Tier I (smallest schools) and Tier II (medium-sized schools) also participated earlier this week in Sartell.
The teams competed in one written round and five oral rounds throughout the day, and each oral round consisted of 45 toss-up questions given to three teams at a time. During its third round, which a Sartell Newsleader reporter observed, the ultimate champ, Sartell High School’s Team 1, lost by only 2 points to Sauk Rapids-Rice, 12-14. The third competitor in that round was Tech High School, which scored 6 points. In the next two oral rounds, however, the Sartell team recovered to win the day by a slim 1 point. The winning team’s total score was 117.5 points. The second-place winner was Elk River with 116.5 points, followed by Sauk Rapids-Rice, Tech High School, Chisago Lakes and Buffalo. All of those six teams will go to the regional competition, as well as six teams from Tier 1 and six teams from Tier II.
The students on all three teams are so knowledgeable and bright they answered many questions correctly even before the questioners finished asking the questions. Some of the questions – those involving math and equations – involved some lightning-quick pen-and-paper computations by contestants.
“What is the only positive number between a square and a cube?”
The Sauk Rapids-Rice team answered that question incorrectly. The Tech team aced it with the answer of “26.”
“Who was the first martyr in the American Revolution?”
Sampii of Sartell Team 1 immediately answered correctly: “Crispus Attucks.”
The questions ranged from algebra and geography, from science to literature, from history and medicine to language and biology.
The other Sartell team that competed March 13 is comprised of Sam Chappell, Katie Christopherson, Aleck Husby and Karl Schleppenbach.
The two Sartell teams’ coach is Sartell High School science teacher Luke Walker.