students make it to fourth round of competition

By Brooke Stevenson    
Twelve Seymour High School students participated in the East Tennessee Public Television Scholars Bowl Tournament this week.
    Scholars Bowl is an academic-based competition that quizzes teams on a range of math, science, history, and related areas of knowledge.
    The students made it to the fourth of six rounds of competition but were defeated by Farragut High School.
    “The fourth round is pretty good, we had to beat three schools,” said Mary Tankersley, Seymour High School science teacher and Scholars Bowl sponsor.
    The 12 students practice twice a week and have won a number of trophies over the years, added Tankersley.
    In October the students competed in the Trevor’s Trivia Tournament at UT-Chattanooga and came in eighth place out of 25 teams.
    Tankersley said while coming in eighth place was special, there was a stand out member of the team.
    Seymour High School senior Joe Krane scored the third highest number of points for an individual at Trevor’s Trivia.
    “He is our captain, he is a team leader and the kids really look up to him,” Tankersley said. “He is fabulous at what he does.”
    The next competition for the team will be the Science Bowl in February and they have also qualified to go to the state competition in March.
    “We have a good group of kids,” Tankersley said. “We do about six or eight competitions a year.
    “It is a good team, there is a good variety. The neat thing about this year is that I have three freshmen and we don’t usually have freshman.”
    The team’s competition at the East Tennessee Public Television Scholars Bowl Tournament will be aired starting after the first of the year on ETPtv.