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GSL Knowledge Bowl team captures state championship

“GSL’s Knowledge Bowlers have had a good year,” proudly statedCoach Vicky Harris. Glencoe-Silver Lake’s season culminated with a state championship last week.
GSL’s 43 team memberes participated in 13 meets, up to and including the regional meet. The top varsity team won 10 of those meets, with two second-place finishes and one third place.
On Friday, April 7, the students finished off this excellent season by winning the State Class A meet. (Knowledge Bowl has two classes – GSL was in Class A, while Hutchinson and Willmar were in Class AA.)
The structure of the meet was quite familiar to a Knowledge Bowl fan. The team started with the written round on Thursday evening, earning the top score in Class A with 51, two points ahead of the second-place team. On Friday morning, the oral rounds began with GSL, St. John’s Prep (SJP) and Minnesota Valley Lutheran (MVL) in room one. The scores at the end of round one were GSL 17, St. John’s 12, and MVL 6.
For round two, GSL was joined by Melrose and Hillcrest. These teams provided a little less competition and the scores were GSL 20, Melrose 9, and Hillcrest 8. For round three, GSL and Melrose were rejoined by St. John’s Prep. In this round, GSL earned 18 points, while SJP scored 14 and Melrose got 6. This meant that at the end of three rounds, GSL had 106 points, which is remarkable. (Many teams would be happy to earn 100 points after four rounds at a regular-season meet.)
During the fourth round, Hillcrest replaced Melrose. This was the most even round, with SJP outscoring GSL and Hillcrest 14-11-11. (GSL remained in first place, because its total was still 10 points higher than SJP.) In round five, the same three teams competed, but in this round GSL again outscored both other teams: GSL 14, SJP 12, Hillcrest 6.
In the awards, GSL won first place with 138.5 points, while SJP’s team finished second with 126.0. Melrose earned third with 107.0 points after winning a tie-breaker round against Hillcrest, which received fourth. Minnesota Valley Lutheran finished fifth with 101, while International Falls got sixth with 99.5.  
In Class AA (the large schools), St. Thomas Academy earned first with 142.5, Big Lake was second with 122.0, Chaska finished third with 120.5, Sauk Rapids Rice was fourth with 118.5, Edina got fifth also with 118.5, and Anoka finished sixth with 118.0.
The state Knowledge Bowl coordinator estimates that there are 925 Knowledge Bowl teams in over 280 schools across the state of Minnesota. Of these teams, GSL and St. Thomas Academy were the top.
GSL’s team was as near perfect as a Knowledge Bowl team can be. When it needed to be fast to get a question, it buzzed first. When it really needed more information to answer a question, it waited. Team members correctly answered questions about geography, history, literature, math, grammar, and science, among other topics. They worked together well for the whole season, and they peaked at Cragun’s.
“It was a pleasure to watch them play,” said Harris.
The team members included Jake Fehrenbach, Jack Gepson, Katie Twiss and Austin Pinske. Fellow seniors Jake Vasek and Maggie Petersen supported the competition at Cragun’s by running scoring in other rooms.