What a Season! West Sound Academy's Knowledge Bowl Team First 1B Squad to Ever Win Regional Trophy

POULSBO, Wash. - March 20, 2013 - PRLog -- At the final Knowledge Bowl competition for teams in the Olympic Educational Service District (OESD) on February 28 at Fort Worden State Park, there was a lot at stake for participating teams.  Thirty-nine squads, with 3 to 6 teams members each, from 14 different schools in Clallam, Jefferson, Kitsap, and Mason counties, competed for six spots at the State Knowledge Bowl tournament on March 23 in Arlington.  Another question to be answered at the February tournament was this:  which school would have the team scoring the highest point that day, and win the honor of keeping the OESD Knowledge Bowl "Traveling Trophy" for the upcoming year?

West Sound Academy's top squad, WS1, triumphed on both accounts.  Captain Evan Romasco-Kelly, and team members Mara Rolsky, Symone Wilson, and Carter Gale won first place for Division 1B, and so one of the two spots at State coming from the OESD for that Division.  (The other four spots went to schools from other divisions - one each from 4A and 1A, and two from 2A.)   The WS1 team not only had the most points in their division, but also had the highest score of all the teams at OESD's February contest - the first time ever for a Division 1B school.  The "Traveling Trophy" base and pillars are filled with the names of winning teams going back to 1981, with all the schools listed being from the higher divisions...until now.  The trophy is back from the engraver's and occupies a special spot in the lobby of Baker, right next to the trophy cabinet.  Next to the trophy is another prize from this year's Knowledge Bowl season:  the Division 1B Summit Award from the OESD competition on January 17.

  The road to West Sound Academy's success in Knowledge Bowl started in the fall of 2008.   West Sound's teachers wanted some kind of team competition for their capable students, and they started looking at options:  Model UN?  Debate?  Librarian Susan Trower had worked with Sarah Freitas, OESD's Instructional Resources Coordinator, to arrange for database subscriptions for the school's library.  Freitas told Trower about Knowledge Bowl, an academic competition organized under the auspices of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with regional meets and a culminating state tournament.  Jim Graves, a history and science teacher at WSA that year was happy to help out with the coaching.  Trower rounded up the necessary start-up supplies:  a V & V Systems 100B timer, sample questions, and registration with the OESD.  Only nine Upper School students signed up the first year (including Trower's daughter, Maddy!) so interested eighth-graders were welcomed.  One of those was Evan Romasco-Kelly.

  WSA's coaches were unfamiliar with Knowledge Bowl, so when Clallam Bay coach Evie Wonderly suggested a WSA/Clallam Bay/Neah Bay scrimmage in October they were happy to accept her offer.  At 7 a.m. on a sunny fall day Romasco-Kelly and the rest of the WSA Knowledge Bowl team headed for Seiku.  WSA's contribution to lunch:  a stack of Central Market take-and-bake pizzas.  The Clallam Bay hosts had everything arranged:  sets of questions, readers and timers, parents to bake the pizzas.   "It was an amazing display of generosity and good sportsmanship" West Sound Academy's coach Trower recalls.  The experience was crucial in helping the WSA team and coaches understand how Knowledge Bowl works

The scrimmage at Seiku gave West Sound's students a taste of what was to come at the OESD competitions at Ft. Worden:  the same format of written and oral rounds, only with many more schools and teams and some very intelligent and experienced players!  That first season WSA's Knowledge Bowl team was thrilled and surprised to win the Summit Award for Division 1B, and was excited to win a spot at the State Tournament. Romasco-Kelly wasn't on the State squad - he was only in eighth-grade, after all - but he did come to watch and cheer on the team, which included his older brother Kyle. WS1 brought home a sixth-place plaque from Spokane that year.

West Sound is a newcomer to a competition that's been going on in our state for more than thirty years.  OESD's Sarah Freitas manages to pull off the complex orchestration of rooms, rounds, teams, brackets, and scoring every time with a combination of diplomacy, attention to detail, and a sense of humor.  The Knowledge Bowl coaches all serve as readers and judges for any teams competing in their rooms. Trower notes, "At every Knowledge Bowl tournament we've ever attended there's always stiff competition - but there's also a spirit of cooperation and fairness among the adults who make these competitions possible."

Trower and her partner Knowledge Bowl coach, WSA math and chemistry teacher Catherine Freeman, are happy to be part of this long tradition of academic competition in our state.  They are going with West Sound's WS1 team to Arlington this weekend, and hoping to bring home more hardware. Team members include Romasco-Kelly, Rolsky, Wilson, Gale, and Hailey Hunter and Jonah Uyyek as alternates.   The caption that the WS1 team put on their name card for the February competition says it all:  "You're fighting for second place!"