8th-grader lands top geography bee honors in Plains
Photo by Ed Moreth<br>Carter Montgomery correctly answers Vatican City as which city is fully contained within the city of Rome during this year's geography bee at Plains.
Rivers, cities, states, and nations were among the topics asked to contestants for the National Geography Bee competitions in Plains and Trout Creek last week.
It took less than an hour for Carter Montgomery to nab first place at the Plains School contest, put on by teacher Les Carpenter, the bee's moderator. Montgomery had been one of the alternates in the eighth-grade competition, but when the winner, Sierra Abromeit, had to bail out just before the school wide contest, Montgomery and alternate Kristel Hanke had to go head to head to see who would be in the contest. The 14-year-old Montgomery first defeated Hanke before competing against seven other students from fifth to eighth grade to take the number one slot. Montgomery was also the winner two years ago when he correctly said Kiev was the Ukraine's capital city.
Each school held qualifying preliminary rounds in the classroom, whose winners competed against one another in the championship to establish a school wide winner.
On Thursday morning, Montgomery and Jessica Hanson of the seventh grade faced off in the championship round. And in the end, Montgomery answered one of three of the final round questions correctly, putting him in first place. Hanson took second. In third place was Peter Graca, also an eighth-grader.
Two students from each fifth to eighth grades competed in the annual bee. Principal Larry McDonald again served as the timer and scorekeeper. Two parents showed up to watch the contest. Fifteen seconds were allowed for each question. Some of the answers had to be written on a small piece of paper. A map printout was used for several questions. The questions touched on places from the East Coast to Guam. Elimination came after two wrong answers.
In the first round, four of the eight students gave correct answers.
Three students were bumped in the second round and two more were disqualified in round three. The other Plains contestants included: Jena Peterson, Anna Privett, Caleb Connolly, Alex Hagerman, and Bransen Krebs.
It took about 45 minutes for Nolan Allan of the seventh grade to nab first place in the Trout Creek contest last week, according to Wendy DosSantos, a teacher who administered the bee. Allan broke the tie-breaker against second place winner Kody Wormwood of the fifth grade by knowing that magma is the term for melted rock beneath the earth surface, said DosSantos, who has been coordinating the bee at Trout Creek since 2001.
Third place in Thursday's bee went to sixth-grader Mikalla Gardner.
Thompson Falls is scheduled to hold its Geography Bee at 2 p.m. today. Only Plains, Thompson Falls and Trout Creek are involved in the geography bee this year. Noxon School, which had participated in the past, decided not to take part this year.
The winner from each participating school will take a 70-question written test to attempt qualifying for the statewide competition. Only the top 100 statewide finishers compete in Billings April 4, said Carpenter.
The winner of the statewide competition wins an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the nationwide competition, and the chance to win both a $25,000 scholarship and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society.
National Geographic sponsors the competition; the rules and formats for the qualifying competitions are the same nationwide. The last time a Montana student won the bee was in 1994.