Students answer tough questions

Scholars compete to answer questions. Photo by Kristina Coulter

How do you spell 'conscientious?' What type of triangle has 60-degree angles? What famous book begins with: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times"?

Most adults would struggle a bit to come up with answers to these questions. But not the youth in Sisters.

Thirteen- and 14-year-old students scrambled to hit their buzzer first to answer a question and earn a point for their team in the Sonrise Christian School Scholars Bowl at Sisters Community Church on Thursday, May 7.

"This was the first annual scholars bowl and all of the schools want to participate again next year," said Sonrise school administrator Dan Cole. "Next year we'll shoot for six participating teams."

The scholars bowl consisted of three teams: Crooked River School in Prineville, Trinity Lutheran from Bend and Sisters' own Sonrise Christian School.

Each team had eight members, five participants and three alternates. All team members were also in seventh or eighth grade, but by the questions they answered, you wouldn't know it.

"We held practice runs in class to see who could answer the most questions," said seventh grade student Rachael Tenneson. "Those are the students who got to be on the team."

The questions came from numerous resource books put out by Campbell's Questions. Debra Bogt, a Sonrise kindergarten parent, compiled the list of questions.

Question categories included: Athletics, Current Events, Art, History, Music, Math, Grammar, Geography, Literature, Bible, Science, General Knowledge, as well as some questions involving visual prompts.

Each question earned one point and students had five seconds to buzz in and answer a question. Each round was 20 minutes.

The bowl was organized as a round robin tournament giving each team a minimum of three games. The top two competed for the championship.

Trinity Seventh Day Adventist competed against Sonrise in the final competition and took first place.