{"id":239,"date":"2007-07-14T15:17:18","date_gmt":"2007-07-14T22:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2007\/07\/14\/bowling-for-knowledge\/"},"modified":"2007-07-14T15:17:18","modified_gmt":"2007-07-14T22:17:18","slug":"bowling-for-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2007\/07\/14\/bowling-for-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Bowling for Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who was the first territorial governor of Utah? What cities did the pony express run between? Who was the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty? What year was the Statue of Liberty given to the United States? Where is said Statue located?<\/p>\n

If you can answer these questions without the aid of an internet search engine you might belong on one of Eaglecrest\u2019s Knowledge bowl teams. If you answered the above questions without breathing\u2014in or out, blinking, or swallowing then you probably belong on the Bonneville team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On Saturday March 10th Ethan and four other children (Nicole, Addie, Tanner and Parker) competed in a district tournament called Knowledge Bowl, and I was their coach.<\/p>\n

\"Knowledge
\nThe “Bowling” Team<\/p>\n

Knowledge Bowl is an annual Jeopardy-like competition run by the Alpine School district. The Knowledge Bowl subject changes every year. This year the focus was on history, specifically American and Utah history. The children who “volunteer” for the team, probably because their parents made them, are given a packet of study topics and can be asked questions about anything in the study guide.<\/p>\n

I have to admit Knowledge Bowl is a lot of work for the kids but I did a fair amount of obsessing over it too. I spent a lot of the week between Christmas and New Year dividing, organizing and researching the nearly 300 study topics. There were many early mornings I uncharacteristically got out of bed and\u00a0hogged the computer to prepare history terms. In the process I have developed new ninja copy\/cut\/paste skills.\u00a0Once school started again in January, I and two other moms\/coaches\/suckers began having weekly practices with the 10 kids that made up the school’s two teams. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next two and a half months found me at school going over the more than 30 pages of research we compiled.<\/p>\n

Ethan and I weren\u2019t the only family members who spent a lot of time on Knowledge Bowl. Gerrit learned the quotes right along with the big kids. He can still tell you that Abraham Lincoln said, \u201cAll I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother\u201d. Afton was the team mascot. She never minded being ripped from her crib or skipping her afternoon nap altogether because I would tell her we were going to see \u201cthe kids\u201d. She crawled around the library pulling books off the shelves and mooching snacks where ever she could find them. I think once she may have eaten an eraser.<\/p>\n

After months of study and lots of practice we felt as ready as we\u2019d ever be to compete. I was really nervous to see how our kids would do. I really wanted them to succeed \u2013 winning is fun. To be honest I also wanted them to win and make me feel like the best, smartest, most attractive, and talented coach in the world\u2014I don\u2019t need much validation do I?<\/p>\n

Eric had just coached Gerrit\u2019s basketball team <\/a>and part of the training involved watching a \u201cSet a Good Example\u201d video. He helpfully suggested I watch it. The video did put my desire for world domination in remission. It gave me perspective\u2014this is about the kids doing their best, learning, and having fun. Winning is great but the video said you can learn more from one loss than winning all your games.<\/p>\n

\"Knowledge
\nA little nervous before the first round
\nMarch 10, 2007<\/p>\n

Eaglecrest\u2019s first round was against Cascade. Another coach warned me that often the kids are so nervous that they let the first few questions go unanswered. Ethan was our team captain he rang in and correctly answered the very first question. I was being a time keeper for the round and it was very hard to focus on the clock. I wanted to jump up and say, \u201cYes!\u2014that\u2018s my son.\u201d We went on to easily beat Cascade 140 to 60. I remember feeling just a bit guilty knowing the team we\u2019d just beaten had surely spent time studying hard too\u2014It\u2019s hard to gracefully gloat when you\u2019re talking about \u201cbeating children\u201d.<\/p>\n

My team seemed happy and we started to relax a bit and then the other shoe fell, we met our Waterloo, Custer had his last stand, Delilah chopped Sampson\u2019s hair and any other literary clich\u00e9s there are to describe a lopsided victory, a spanking, a massacre.<\/p>\n

Eagelcrest\u2019s second round was against a school from Bonneville. They were scary good — or at least their captain was.\u00a0The moderator was often unable to finish reading a question. The Bonneville captain would have already rung in, answered the question, and also answered the next unasked question. Even his own teammates didn’t have a chance.\u00a0The final score was like 215 to 15. Our kids were dazed. In all our practice rounds we\u2019d never been beaten so soundly. Off we marched to our next round with only a few minutes to reassure the kids the next game would be better. It had to be —\u00a0nothing could be quite as demoralizing as that.<\/p>\n

Our final two rounds went much like the first. Eaglecrest won easily. I was so proud of the kids. Ethan was a great team captain. He answered many questions and also unselfishly let other teammates answer. He listened to his team\u2019s opinion on bonus questions and was generally very cool under pressure.<\/p>\n

The \u201cGood Example\u201d video was right. We did learn a lot from losing to Bonneville. We know that next year\u2019s topic is science and we\u2019ll be ready for Bonneville. Sign this sucker\u2014I mean coach up.<\/p>\n

\"Mom<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This story was written a few months ago, but the site administrator didn’t get his act together to get it posted sooner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who was the first territorial governor of Utah? What cities did the pony express run between? Who was the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty? What year was the Statue of Liberty given to the United States? Where is said Statue located? If you can answer these questions without the aid of an internet search … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bowling for Knowledge”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-familynews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1800,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/1800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}