Mount Si Knowledge Bowl teams give strong performance at regional tournament

By Evan Pappas • March 9, 2017 1:30 am
Mount Si students gathered on Monday, March 6, for Knowledge Bowl practice. From left: Lily Nordby, Preston Henning, Manjesh Puram, Noah Vaughn, Aayush Singh, Shyam Ghandi, Casey Harris, with Coach Kevin Knowles. (Evan Pappas/Staff Photo)
Mount Si students gathered on Monday, March 6, for Knowledge Bowl practice. From left: Lily Nordby, Preston Henning, Manjesh Puram, Noah Vaughn, Aayush Singh, Shyam Ghandi, Casey Harris, with Coach Kevin Knowles. (Evan Pappas/Staff Photo)

On Saturday Feb. 18, two Mount Si High School Knowledge Bowl teams placed in the top 10 at the regional competition at Mount Tahoma High School.

Despite some strong seniors graduating last year, the Mount Si teams were able to perform very well as they developed their younger members.

Mount Si’s A-team, the Mount Si Sike-Outs, placed fifth overall out of the 19 teams at the competition. The B-team, Mount Si Phat Cats, followed with an eighth place finish.

The A-team is made up of seniors Casey Harris, Rahul Rajkumar, Preston Henning, Donovan See and juniors Lily Nordby and Shyam Gandhi. The B-team also has four seniors Noah Vaughn, Coleman Trader, Joseph Nassar and Vishu Rathnam, along with freshman Hari Rathnam and Aayush Singh.

Each team competes in a written test and three rounds of questions that students must buzz-in to answer. Kevin Knowles, Knowledge Bowl coach, supervisor and Mount Si High School teacher, said the top team missed going to state by seven points, which would have put them into the fourth qualifying spot.

“We got 58 and Curtis (High School) got 64, with six they could have tied,” Knowles said. “The regionals consist of a written test for 35 points and three oral rounds that could be potentially up to 45 points each. They scored a little lower on the written than they should have.”

The Knowledge Bowl is an academic competition that tests teams of students on topics such as math, science, history and language arts. It is also one of two academic clubs at Mount Si that has competitions; the other is Debate Club.

Knowles said that while some students have a good knowledge of the topics across the board, others specialize in certain topics. The teams are created by balancing the areas of knowledge between the students.

Now that regional competition is over, the team will continue to meet and will pursue some of the private competitions like the upcoming Quiz Bowl on April 8.

“We have a couple of opportunities that present themselves that are private, one is called the Quiz Bowl and that is run by a series of former Knowledge Bowlers who kept it going in college,” he said. “If we make it into the top echelon of that, we qualify for nationals.”