Eads seniors Joe Haase, Mollie Kelley, Amber Kopasz, and Hatch Nelson concluded their high school knowledge bowl careers in an impressive manner when the team finished in a tie for fifth place among the 16 1A teams that competed in the Colorado Knowledge Bowl State Championship. 

In addition to the strong finish for the varsity team, Maggie Haase and Rachel Kopasz were a force to be reckoned with when they stepped up to fill an empty slot in the tournament created when a team dropped out at the last minute.  The sophomore and freshman girls competed as a junior varsity team, so were not able to officially place in the tournament.  However, if their score had been included among the 1A varsity scores, the duo would have finished eighth.

The state championship was held online and consisted of two written and eight oral rounds (plus an oral round to determine the classification champions) spread over two days.  A total of 60 teams from five size classifications participated in the competition.  Teams were not separated by school size until the final, classification championship round.  Therefore, both Eads teams competed against schools of all sizes throughout the tournament.

The Eads varsity team had a solid score on the first written round, then scored fairly consistently through the following oral rounds.  The written round did not go quite as well the second day, but the team members continued their consistent scoring through the second day’s oral rounds. 

The JV team ended up going head-to-head against two 5A teams in the first oral round.  The young team struggled during that round, but came back nicely in the rest of the oral rounds.  On the second day, they had the highest written round score among the all the 1A schools.

The team members and coaches would like to thank everyone involved with knowledge bowl for their support through this unusual season.  The school’s filters would not allow the teams to compete online from the school, so special thanks goes to the First Christian Church in Eads for allowing the teams to compete from there.