Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
The Garfield-Palouse High School Knowledge Bowl team went to Arlington for the state meet March 23 and placed fifth.
A total of 102 teams from all school classifications competed at the state meet at Arlington High School.
After five 50-question preliminary rounds, the team of Wyatt Mitchell, Landen Morton, Gabe Cocking, Hunter Woltering and Kevin Knauff held sixth-place, advancing them to the 1B finals.
The prelimaries included four oral rounds and one written.
“The goal is to ring in before the reader is finished asking the question,” said George Landle, Gar-Pal science teacher and co-Knowledge Bowl coach, along with Noel Akin who teaches language arts.
In the finals, four students from each team competed at a time, with the chance to substitute halfway through. The subject areas of the Jeopardy-style questions included social studies, math, science, English, literature and geography.
Vying for the fifth-place spot, the Gar-Pal team beat Almira-Coulee-Hartline in a head-to-head playoff. All told, the students competed from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., fielding 310 oral questions and 50 written.
Leaving Palouse the day before, the Gar-Pal team’s school district Suburban was escorted from town by two fire engines and a police cruiser.
They qualified for the state competition by taking third in the district Knowledge Bowl at Whitworth College in Spokane March 8.
Gar-Pal’s team practices once per week during the season at lunchtime, reading sample questions from Knowledge Bowl archives. The regular season runs from January to December and Gar-Pal competes against schools in Whitman and Latah counties.
“We’d like to thank all for their support,” said Akin. “Especially the local fire and police for their ‘cool’ escort from town, Mr. Bofenkamp and Viking Crew for buying the kids a tournament t-shirt, Bev and Monty Nearing for the awesome snacks, Robin Woltering for the ‘goodie bags’ and parents for sharing such great, smart kids.”
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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