Down to the last question

Jamie Doran

Valley Press

The Plains Geography Bee came down to the very last question Tuesday to determine the winner and who will represent the school.

Seventh-grader Jim Holland won the competition after beating eighth grader Dylan Francesconi in a question about what ancient land in Mexico had been conquered by the English.

Holland said the Aztecs, while Francesconi said the Mayans, with the Aztecs being the correct answer.

Francesconi and Holland were two of eight contestants representing the fifth through eighth graders. The representatives had already won their grade level competitions and the winner, as well as the runner up for each grade were sent up to compete in the school-wide competition.

Plains teacher Les Carpenter was in charge of administering the questions, while Principal Larry McDonald kept the time and score.

The bee consisted of two rounds. The first being the “finalist” round with all eight contestants competing in a variety of different questions about United States and world geography. The students could only get two questions wrong before they were eliminated, they were also allowed to pass on a question, but the pass would count as a wrong answer. The finalist round was used to narrow the field down to the top two, who would then go head to head in the championship round.

The first question about hardiness zones in the area stumped half of the field as four students got it wrong. The second questions proved even more challenging as all eight of the students could not place exactly where Myrtle Beach is located. The three answers given were California, Florida and Hawaii (Myrtle Beach is in South Carolina).

Moving on to the third question, half of the field had already been eliminated, and Holland was the only one to get this right, automatically advancing him to the championship round.

At this point there were three people left, even though they had each already gotten their two questions wrong, competing for the last slot and the third place position. The competition went on several more rounds, with no one getting any of the questions right until round eight when Francesconi answered his question about what state Bozeman was in correctly. By round 11 sixth-grader Carson Chisholm answered correctly the state that housed Glacier National Park, moving him into the third place position.

For the championship round the contestants each had three questions they had to answer, with all the questions being the same. Whoever got the most of these questions answered correctly would be the school champion.

It was neck and neck as both Holland and Francesconi got the first two questions wrong, however Holland was able to get the final question right, making him the school champion.

For his victory, he was awarded a medal and a certificate. Now he will participate in a written test. If he scores in the top 100 students in the state, he and his family will get an all-expense paid trip to Bozeman to participate in the state-wide competition.

“This is a really fun way for the students to get to learn,” Carpenter said.