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HometownCamas-Washougal, Washington, Post-RecordTuesday, March 27, 2012 Section B

By Danielle Frost

Post-Record Staff

A “three-peat” is often consid-ered the crown jewel in team achievement: To win a state title three years in a row takes

accomplishment to a whole new level.

It’s the exact feeling the Cam-as High School Knowledge Bowl Team had when they realized they’d won the state tournament again.

“It was really exciting,” said Marcus Bintz, team captain. “State was a really good oppor-tunity for us to showcase our strengths well. We’re very happy.”

Knowledge Bowl is a competi-tion which quizzes students on topics relevant to their education.

“Basically, it’s everything you ever learned in school if you never forgot anything,” said team mem-ber Griffin King. “It’s all related to school topics.”

Knowledge Bowl competitions include both written and oral questions. The written round is a multiple-choice exam taken by each team as a whole. Results of this round are used for seeding teams in the oral rounds. In the oral rounds, there are three teams per room. A team member may buzz in as soon as he or she choos-es. If they miss a question, no points are deducted, but the other teams then may try to answer the question based on who buzzed in first. The winner is the team with the greatest number of points at the end of the meet.

At state, there were four prelim-inary rounds for nine semi-final spots. After the semi-final round was over, three teams went to the final. These were CHS, Charles Wright Academy and Interlake High School.

The Papermakers had edged out Charles Wright the past two years at the state championship and were looking to do it again.

“Charles Wright is tradition-ally a really strong school,” Coach Dale Croswell said. “But my kids jumped off to a quick lead, so Charles Wright was chasing us the whole time. We never trailed.”

Croswell has been coaching Knowledge Bowl for 25 years,

Showcasing their strengths

CHS Knowledge Bowl team takes home the state trophy three years running

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CHS junior Jeffrey Lee reads questions during Knowledge Bowl practice.

The 2010 Knowledge Bowl state championship team included (from left) Chris Emmet, Nick Lim, Alec Maier, Chris Grote and Ryan Gompertz (captain).

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The 2011 Knowledge Bowl state championship team included (left to right) Jacob Freedman, Chris Grote, Ryan Gompertz (captain), Nick Lim, Alec Maier and Chris Emmet.

Danielle Frost/post-reCorD

The 2012 CHS Knowledge Bowl team celebrates its “three-peat” last week. Team members include (front row) Evan Roche, Marcus Bintz, Griffin King, coach Dale Croswell and Noah Wachlin and (back row) Vaughn Okerlund and Tim Grote.

but this is the first time he’s had a team win state three years run-ning.

“I’m very proud of these kids,” he said. “None of them have state competition experience. I really think they found themselves at this meet. It’s always a fun ride.”

Croswell credits the success of his teams to the popularity of Knowledge Bowl, a good science and technology magnet program at the high school, and successful middle school teams.

“This year we had four varsity and five junior varsity teams here,” he said. “As far as state goes, I let the kids decide who is going to be teamed up to go.”

This year, the team was made up of all juniors. They are King, Bintz, Vaughn Okerlund, Evan Roche, Tim Grote and Noah Wachlin.

“I like the fast pace of the com-petition, it’s really intense,” Oker-lund said. “You have to mentally sift through thousands of pieces

of information to get to what you need.”

Next year, Camas High will move from 3A to 4A competition.

“It will be interesting to see how well we can compete at that level,” Croswell said. “Who knows? Maybe we will bring home one of the first 4A state championships to Camas High.”

Sample Knowledge Bowl queStion

Q: What is the name of the prime minister of the United Kingdom?

A: David Cameron

Sample Knowledge Bowl queStion

Q: Once called Vitamin M, it is important in

preventing neural tube defects in developing

human fetuses.

A: Folic acid

Q: Though outnumbered two to one, Militates’ forces managed to kill almost one quarter of the invading Persian forces. The Greek and Persian

armies spent the first eight days of the battle in a stalemate, though on the ninth day the Greeks drove

the main Persian army back to the sea, marched back to Athens and routed the secondary Persian

army there as well. Though the modern version has been mangled from the original story, Identify this 490 BCE battle that involved Phidippides’ run from

the namesake battlefield to Athens.

A: Marathon

Sample Knowledge Bowl queStion

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