Somewhat Clean takes State silver

Second in State! That’s the status of La Conner High School’s “Somewhat Clean” Knowledge Bowl team after the State tournament last Saturday in Arlington.

The competition was an entire day’s worth of brain-draining stress, as the six team members boarded the bus before sunrise and didn’t finish until late afternoon. They competed against 18 other 2B ranked schools from across the state in a brain sport similar to “Jeopardy!” It was all about who knew what and who could buzz in first with the correct answer.

All 18 teams answered 50 written questions on every academic subject imaginable, then competed in four oral rounds consisting of 50 questions each. “Somewhat Clean” came in first place in each of their qualifying rounds. At lunchtime, the lowest scoring nine teams were sent home, and the top nine teams battled it out in the semi-final rounds, with three teams competing against one another in three different rooms. The winner of each of those rooms competed against each other in the final round for either first, second or third place.

Team “Somewhat Clean” came in first in the semi-final round, which put them up against the other two top teams in the State, Soap Lake High School and St. George’s Prep School from Spokane.

The rules of the game make it an exciting spectator sport, as the facilitator starts reading a question, and any team can buzz in even before the question is finished being read. Once a team buzzes in, the question reading stops and the team must answer without the benefit of knowing fully what the question is. The questions are often worded in such a way that the final few words really matter, so even though teams might know the answer if they waited until the entire question was read, part of the strategy in winning is to buzz in too soon and take an educated guess, in order to get the point.

One opposing team accidentally buzzed in just after the first two words of the question “In Libera” were read. Each team gets 15 seconds to confer with other teammates to come up with an answer. At the last second they threw up their hands and just guessed with the answer “Ebola,” and they were right.

In a similar move, but with somewhat more confidence behind them, La Conner’s team “Somewhat Clean buzzed in early on the question “What two Latin words complete the end of this quote by Jonathan Swift, ‘So naturalist observe, a flea...’”

The quote was not complete, but “Somewhat Clean” knew the correct answer: “ad inifinitum.”

It leaves the audience wondering, “How do they know this stuff?”

For math questions, however, no one ever buzzes in early, with questions like “Two pi over five radians equals how many degrees.” With only 15 seconds, coming up with the answer of “72” means some quick thinking. La Conner got that point after only 5 seconds.

Many of the questions in the final round were around literature, parts of speech and rules of grammar, which team “Somewhat Clean” admits is an area of weakness.

Questions like “What’s the first prepositional phrase in the Preamble to the Constitution?” means you not only must know the Preamble, but you must know grammar definitions. Had there been more questions in math, science, geography, history, Latin, politics, or current events — the team’s strengths — they might have taken the championship. As it was, they lost to St. George Prep by five points in the mentally exhausting final round.

Team “Somewhat Clean” came in fourth in State last year, so Coach Sally Schroeder is well pleased the team has improved so much this year. Her only regret is that, as a coach, she must also act as a facilitator for other teams during the oral rounds, so she was not able to watch her own team compete as much as she’d have liked.

The team got its name last year when members asked their then coach Ben Hazelwood what they should call themselves and he replied, “You can call yourselves anything you want as long as it’s somewhat clean.”

With half of the team being sophomores or juniors, “Somewhat Clean” is looking forward to another shot next year at being the State champions. La Conner should be proud of their home team talent.