Geography Bee

On January 19th, first place students from their seventh grade or eighth grade class Geography Bee participated in the Brier Terrace Middle School Geography Bee. Hosted by Nina Franklin, the participants were answering questions related to the world geography features. If they answered two or more questions incorrectly, they would be eliminated. After a long competition, there were two contestants who made it to the championship round, Robbie Mize and Connor Bryan. After a couple of questions and managing to reach the tiebreaker, the winner was Robbie Mize.

Mize, the winner of the competition, said that in his classroom competition, he thought it was fairly easy. “There was a couple of competitors...so there was this one guy who got the same answers with me so we had to go into a tiebreaker round and it was a question about a river and I answered the Mississippi and he answered the Amazon and I got that right so I won.” He stated that he felt that he was going to win against this person because he knew that he had a decent mindset towards geography. He said that he was paying attention a lot more because he thought the tie breaker questions were going to increase in difficulty and he said he did and he won. Mize also said people really wanted to be victorious and be in his position after he won the classroom competition. He said “The one guy who was in the tiebreaker round, we were...he was kind of mad at me for a while.” He later stated that he made up with that person and became friends with him.

Mize spent some time preparing but didn’t feel he needed much. He said, “Well… I look at maps on my own for a while. I really like maps, they are really awesome...so anyway, I really didn’t need to prepare that much for it.” Mize also said preparing was worth it before the competition started. He said, “Well, before I thought it was worth it and you know if I lost, because then, I would have another chance in eighth grade and then, maybe all the stuff I learned will come in handy!"

Mize said how he felt in the competition the final two rounds. He said, “ I was nervous, there was a lot of cameras pointed at everyone and during the last round, there was cameras pointed at everyone who was still in. I was very nervous that something I did was being broadcasted to the entire school.” Mize also said relating to his confidence during the two rounds, “Well, I was a little confident, I knew I was going against a really good guy (Connor Bryan) but I was still fairly confident. I mean I got to the school round when I was in fourth grade and third so that was pretty good so I thought it was pretty worth it.” Mize said his ambition was to go to the Washington State Geography Bee. He said, “Yeah! I really want to go to the state competition because I think I might win the state competition but I really don’t have that much confidence there, but you know, might happen!” We will know the results of his test to qualify very soon. Mize said one last thing about this whole competition: “Well...I say geography is fun...its cool, its awesome. There is a lot of maps out there, some of them are funny, like you can browse the internet looking at different maps.”

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