by Dennis Dalman
news@thenewsleaders.com
The members of the varsity team are Sam Chappell, Adam Dullinger, Curt Koopmeiners, Gopi Ramanathan and Quinn Skoog. That team earned 109 points to win first. Second was St. John’s Prep School with 96.5 points and third was Chaska with 94.5 points. Dullinger, Koopmeiners and Skoog are seniors. Chapell is a junior, and Ramanathan is a sophomore.
The members of the junior team are Dawson Rogers, Derek Schmidt, Adam Schroer, RJ Sobania and Michael Volgman-Mercuri. The first-place winner in the junior-varsity category was St. John’s Prep School with 93.5 points, and second-place was Big Lake with 86 points. The Sartell team had 78 points. All of its members are sophomores.
The invitational meet at Sartell involved 69 teams who competed in a written round of 60 questions, followed by four oral rounds of 45 questions.
The Sartell Knowledge Bowl coach is Luke Walker, a science teacher who has coached the teams for three years.
The win by the varsity team was a sweet revenge victory over St. John’s Prep School. Before the Feb. 15 Sartell Invitational meet, the Sartell-St. Stephen varsity team took second-place at a meet at Eden Valley-Watkins High School where 52 teams competed. In that face-off, St. John’s Prep took first. The Sartell-St. Stephen junior-varsity team took third at Eden Valley-Watkins.
So far, Sartell-St. Stephen Knowledge Bowl teams have competed in three invitational meets – one in Buffalo, one in Big Lake and the last at Eden Valley-Watkins. The Big Lake meet was one of the largest in Knowledge Bowl history, comprising 97 teams in competition, Walker noted.
In the second week of March, there will be a sub-regional meet after which up to five teams from each of the state’s regions will go on to state competition. At the state level, competition will be separated into small schools and larger schools.
The Sartell Varsity Knowledge Bowl team took first-place honors Feb. 15 at its invitational. Its members are (left to right) Dawson Rogers, Sam Chappell, Dalton Foss (score-box operator), Quinn Skoog, Adam Dullinger and Curt Koopmeiners.
