A Jay Middle School eighth-grader took home the title.
JAY – Can you name the Muslim country that was once a part of British India and that’s official language today is Urdu?
If not, don’t lament. You are not alone.
The correct answer is Pakistan and that’s just what Jay Middle School eighth-grader Sam Howse wrote down on Wednesday morning to beat fellow eighth-grader Ryan Crocker and clinch the geography bee, which was moderated by middle school social studies teacher Jeff Jewell.
The original field of 28 was whittled down to 10 students in a single elimination round in December.
Those 10 appeared on the stage of the school at the geography bee on Wednesday. It didn’t take too long, only three rounds of United States geography questions, for the 10 to be pared to the two boys featured in the championship head-to-head round.
They both answered the first question in the championship round: The first successful airplane flight by the Wright Brothers occurred 100 years ago at Kitty Hawk in which U.S. state? Smiling smugly, they wrote their correct answers: North Carolina.
But when the Pakistan question came up, Crocker drew a blank, jotting down Afghanistan just to get something on the paper. Meanwhile, Howse said he just took a “lucky guess.”
Both boys failed to come up with Italy as the answer to the third question – The 2006 Winter Olympics will take place in Turin, located on the Po River in which European country?
Howse, 13, was crowned the victor, receiving a medal, T-shirt, a yearlong subscription to National Geographic for Kids magazine, which sponsored the bee, and his name on a plaque in the school’s trophy case.
Along with the winners from each participating middle school in Maine, he’ll also take a lengthy multiple-choice test, and if he is one of the state’s top 100 scorers, compete in the state bee later this year.
Although he was proud to savor his win before a small crowd of parents in Jay, he’s not eager to move forward, saying is doesn’t like being up in front of people. And forget about the national bee. “That would freak me out way too much,” Howse said laughing.
Both boys had unique approaches to studying. Howse said he booted up his laptop to look at a map program five minutes before the bee, but as soon as it turned on, it was time to go.
Crocker, 14, likes to study license plates he sees on the road, which is how he says he got the North Carolina question right, noting that the Wright Brother’s famous glider is on that state’s plate.
Bee organizer and social studies teacher Lynn Lewia said she was frustrated that students in the early rounds didn’t know their U.S. geography. But she added that she knows students study and chalked up their mistakes to nerves.
The bee “opens their minds up a little bit to geography and some students are very knowledgeable about it,” she said. “This gives them a chance for them to show that off.”
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