Knowledge Bowl team advances
The Minneota Knowledge Bowl team placed ninth among 27 teams at the Sub-Region 3 meet Friday in Jackson, and advances to the Region 3 competition March 12 at Southwest Minnesota State University.
The top 14 teams from the sub-region meet qualified for the region competition. Due to inclement weather, the sub-region meet was delayed an hour to allow the teams more time to travel.
As a result, the written round of 60 questions and four oral rounds of 45 questions each, were reduced to 40 questions and three oral rounds of 45 questions each.
“We opted to go to the sub-region event today in Jackson, rather than the sub-region event next Friday in Worthington, because three of our five members will be gone to the Robotics competition in Duluth next week,” said Coach Sara Fier.
Minneota was missing one of its team members as Cole VanOverbeke was competing in the Class A State Wrestling Tournament this weekend.
The other four Minneota team members are: Trevor Belaen, Jaymes Moon, Reid Fier and Alyssa Engels. “The competition started with the written round,” said Coach Fier.
“Each team had 30 minutes to complete the 40 questions.” Teams were placed into different rooms for the oral rounds based on how they did on the written questions.
The top three teams competed in Room 1, the next three teams competed in Room 2, etc. “Minneota was in Room 2 for the first oral round,” said Fier.
“After the 45 questions for the first oral round, teams are ranked again and placed in rooms for round two, and subsequent oral rounds, in the same way.”
Teams earn bonus points for each round they are in Rooms 1, 2 or 3 (1.5 bonus points for Room 1, 1 bonus point for Room 2, and .5 bonus point for Room 3.
“Coaches serve as question readers/judges in the rooms for the oral rounds,” Fier explained.
During the oral rounds, each team has a pressure-sensitive electronic strip that is used to “buzz in” when responding to a question, Fier noted.
And the first team that buzzes in is allowed 15 seconds to respond to the questions.
If the team answers the questions correctly, it receives the point. If they answer incorrectly, the second team to buzz in then gets 15 seconds to answer and steal the point.