'Somewhat Clean' cleans up at brain meet

La Conner High School’s Knowledge Bowl team, “Somewhat Clean,” got off to an exciting start last week when they tied for First Place at the first of three qualifying District tournaments.

What’s most impressive about this particular win is that schools of every size in Northwest Washington compete together in these early rounds. Due to La Conner’s small student body size, they are ranked as a “2B” category school, so when they compete in the Regional and State competitions later in the school year, they will only compete against other “2B” ranked schools, but in these early District tournaments, they compete equally against all A and B ranked schools.

La Conner’s tie for first place was with the much larger “3A” ranked Arlington High School, surpassing other high schools including Anacortes, Kamiak and Sehome — all previous “A” ranked State champions.

Their first place win last week clearly showed they are the team to beat, no matter which category they fall under.

La Conner sent three different teams to the District tournament in Everett last Thursday, but it was team “Somewhat Clean,” consisting of team members Will Malcomson, Jordan Holt, Robert Cook and team captain, Kaleb Slaatthaug that pulled off the impressive victory. Last year, this team, placed fourth in the final State competition.

Knowledge Bowl is a brain sport, somewhat like “Jeopardy!” and is coached this year by 12th-grade English teacher Sally Schroeder, who has coached Knowledge Bowl in the past and finds it “hard to stay away.” Her assistant coach is Beth Clothier, the school librarian.

This year’s Knowledge Bowlers consist of Antonia Benetti, Keith Carlton, Emma Christianson, Robert Cook, Katie Cram, John Edson, Marilu Fernandez, Hailey Hakenson, Biruktawit Hasenbalg, Tsedenya Hasenbalg, Heather Hendriksen, Nicole Hendriksen, Hector Hernandez, Jordan Holt, Marina Kochuten, Will Malcomson, Scottie Miller, Emily Parker, Eris Peterson, Abbey Ray, Abbey Harper, Kaleb Slaatthaug, Elizabeth Tripp, Lily Weigova, and Jayna Whited, who each give up their lunch period twice a week to practice against one another.

A buzzer bar runs the length of each team’s table. As questions pertaining to math, science, literature, grammar, current events, history, pop culture and politics are read, any team can buzz in if they think they know the answer, but then the instructor stops reading the question — so the trick is knowing when to buzz in.

Being the first to have a crack at answering the question often comes with the price of not knowing fully what the question will be, as happened at the tournament last week when a question was read that started out as, “At the same time in 2014 that authorities were searching for clues to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a horrific one-square-mile mudslide killed 43 and destroyed many homes…” and then a team buzzed in with the answer, “Oso, Washington.”

They got it wrong because the rest of that sentence was “in what U.S. state?” so the answer should have just been “Washington.” It’s tricky business, buzzing in too early to get that point.

Ironically, that slide happened on the very day and at the very time last year’s State Knowledge Bowl tournament was happening – in Arlington, Washington.

At every tournament, the first round consists of 50 multiple choice questions where each team has 45 minutes to answer questions that range from “Which bone is part of the axial skeleton?” to “Who formed the DeBeers Mining Company?” The correct answers are then tallied and teams compete in oral rounds against teams who scored similarly. After each round, scores are tallied again so teams are reshuffled according to how well they did – or didn’t do. Each oral round consists of 50 more questions in various academic topics.

“Somewhat Clean” member Will Malcomson is clearly the heavyweight member of the La Conner High School Knowledge Bowl team as his impressive array of knowledge causes competing team member’s jaws to drop and eyes to roll as he answers questions correctly that otherwise seem impossible.

The next District tournament is Dec. 9 at Jackson High School in Mill Creek. The public is always welcome to come and cheer on their hometown team, as Coach Schroeder says, “It is so fun to see how much these young people know about the world.”