Tiebreaker determines winner at geography bee

GURNEE – Middle-schoolers were able to show off their geography knowledge during Woodland Middle School’s National Geographic Bee.

Twenty-one finalists, determined by smaller competitions with groups of 100 students, competed Jan. 15 in the school’s Learning Resource Center to determine who could move on to the state competition.

Competition was fierce, and a tie-breaker round made Meghan Mager, seventh grader, the winner over runner-up Danielle Herring, sixth grader.

Mager will take a written examination to determine if she’ll compete in the state competition in April.

Mager said she only studied about 30 minutes for the competition.

“I watched The Amazing Race – that helped me a lot,” Mager said. “I look at maps and travel a lot. I’ve been to Florida, Nevada, California. ... I didn’t think I’d make it this far.”

Mager said she likes maps because “you can see places and learn about them without reading.”

Paul Durietz, social studies teacher, said Woodland has participated in National Geographic Bee for 25 years.

“We’ve had three or four students go to state, and one even made it to the top 10 in the state,” Durietz said.

During the bee, students answered questions on dry-erase boards or orally as a panel of four judges observed. The first round of questions focused on the location of U.S. rivers, states and Native American cultures.

The locations of rivers like the Kissimee tripped up many of the students, and by round two only eleven students remained in the competition.

“You competed against 100 people on your team to get to this point, so well done,” a judge told the remaining students.

After about five more rounds of questions on freshwater withdrawal statistics for individual states, Mager and Herring were left to battle it out by answering the most of three questions on global geography correctly.

The final questions on Asian geography, including “The Gobi Desert is in what Asian country?” made Mager the winner, though she doesn’t consider world geography to be her strong suit.

“I’m good at U.S. geography,” she said.