On to State

Today was the regional meet for Delaney's Knowledge Bowl team. It was up in Weld County, but he enjoyed having us root, so Kyle, Tia, and I packed up and headed north.

This was after I had to get up early to get him to school 40 minutes earlier than normal. Kendall had to go, but she's am morning person, so she didn't complain. We dropped Delaney off and then went to get coffee together and grab a few groceries. A nice half hour with my daughter, just living life.

I had a conference call, which suffered from the lack of good service outside of Denver. I dropped a number of times, but managed to get on just as I dropped off Tia and Kyle. However I had to go back because we were at the wrong school and needed to drive another 4 or 5 miles. We did and I managed to wrap up things after only about 30 minutes, so I didn't miss a lot.

They take a written test and then the teams are ranked. In this case, 6 teams competed, with 3 to a room. EHS didn't do that well, so they were in the second room, second slot, which would be 5th to start. Their teacher suspected they tanked the written test, but Delaney said they didn't.

The way things work is that you get a question, like a game show, and you buzz in to answer. Fast buzzes matter. However the top team in the district is really fast. Being in another room is an advantage, and of the 50 questions, Delaney's team got 19, which was the second highest oral round score all day.

That helped them move into the first room, where we watched them compete well against the top team and the third place team. They finished round 3 up by 7 over the 3rd place team, but way behind the top team. As we've seen all season.

The fourth round had them struggling. Delaney buzzed in early on a question, missed it (he needed to hear the whole thing) and then was discouraged. His team struggled and gave up their lead. They were up by only 3 going into the last round. A little encouragement from Tia helped.

They took second place running away. Still behind the top team by a lot, but comfortably in second by over 10 points.

Now they get a week + off, with Spring Break next week, then cramming for the state competition on Apr 17/18.

Boy, he's tall.