Charles Wright Academy’s Knowledge Bowl teams turned in dominating performances at the recent Tacoma Invitational and Puget Sound Regional Competition and the Tarriers have earned the chance to compete for the school’s third consecutive state championship in Richland on Saturday, March 27.  CWA not only won the regional competition decisively and qualified for state as the top seed, but did so competing for the first time two divisions above schools its own size.  In the final rounds of these two competitions, CWA defeated Stadium High School, Bellarmine Prep and Federal Way Public Academy.

“CWA’s consistently excellent performance is testimony not only to the school’s outstanding academics, but especially to the talent and work ethic of its students,” said Coach John Lemma.  “Charles Wright is always the school to beat.”

Knowledge Bowl is a fast-paced event that uses a quiz-show format to test students’ knowledge of math, science, history, geography and literature. Competitions feature four oral rounds of 45 to 60 questions each and one written round of 40 to 60 questions. Teams have 15 seconds to confer and provide an answer.

CWA won state titles in the 1A division against other schools with 467 students are less in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008.  In 2009, CWA’s third request was granted to compete against 2A schools.  At the state tournament, CWA out-scored all other teams in the 2A, 3A and 4A divisions in the written round with a record 47 out of 50 points.  In the three-way final against Anacortes and Tumwater, Charles Wright started out slowly, falling behind seven to three.  They came back strong winning ten straight points to surge ahead after 32 questions.  They held on to win the 2A title with 15 points to Anacortes’ ten and Tumwater’s seven.

In 2010, the Tarriers moved up another notch to the 3A bracket.  Although CWA has just 290 high school students this year, their competitors at this year’s state championship will come from schools with up to 1,280 students.

Like a handful of other schools around the state, CWA has qualified two teams to compete at the state tournament.  The are coached by Lemma and David Kangas.

CWA’s A Team is an all-senior squad: Austin Jung of Gig Harbor, Jeremiah Papa of Federal Way, Ben Mishkin of Olympia, Aimee Nguyen of Olympia, Blake Walsh of Federal Way, and William Livingston of Federal Way.  Jung, Mishkin and Livingston were all members of the school’s 2009 2A state championship team.  Jung will attend Yale University next year.  His teammates have not yet announced their college choices.

CWA’s B Team includes: Junior Yuriy Korol of University Place, Junior Alex Smith of Lake Tapps, Sophomore Sarah Yamamoto of Lakewood, Sophomore Anthony Wohns of Tacoma, Sophomore Sarah Sadlier of Gig Harbor and Sophomore Peter Schilling of Tacoma.

In addition to excelling in Knowledge Bowl, this group of students is very involved in other academic programs, athletics, drama and music.

The Tarriers will compete against qualifying teams from North Thurston, Camas, Columbia River, Port Angeles, West Valley (Yakima), Mt. Spokane, North Central, Lakeside (Seattle), Bellevue, Interlake and Peninsula.  The defending 3A state champions, a team from Kennedy High School, are not returning to the state tournament.