3-7-2010 “The best field trip ever!” Fall Mountain WorldQuest Team Heads to Nationals By Chuck Bingaman Having bested five area high school world affairs teams last Tuesday, Fall Mountain Regional High School’s four-student team of international affairs experts are heading to the Academic WorldQuest national championship at the National Press Club in Washington DC April 24. Team captain Lindsay Sanchez-Navarro, a senior from Walpole, and colleagues Mackenzie Klema, Kirk Grimsley and Quinn Prentiss-Sturgill, all seniors from Charlestown, were tied with another team at halftime in last week’s 50-question challenge. But they rode a dominant second half to victory in the “quiz-bowl”-like test of 10 areas of world affairs knowledge. Sponsored by World Affairs Councils of America and, locally by the Windham World Affairs Council of Vermont, the championship weekend in Washington brings together 50 winning teams from regional contests coast to coast. The Savings Bank of Walpole, the Walpole Foundation, and Entergy Corporation cover most expenses for the Fall Mountain team’s championship weekend. The Fall Mountain team travels to and from Washington DC by Amtrak from Bellows Falls. “We enjoy each other so much,” noted senior Klema on Friday. “We’re really good friends outside of this as well!” And faculty coach Nick Belsky added that the team’s closeness makes it easier to respect each other’s opinions when difficult questions require the team to debate possible answers and make difficult choices. Belsky also pointed out that Fall Mountain has won the regional meet in the two previous years, that WorldQuest success demands a great deal of extra study by every team member and that the team’s success must be credited in part to the full Fall Mountain faculty. “I meet with the students every week throughout the school year and teach them how to win and the strategy of winning. But I don’t teach the AP [Advanced Placement] students or their courses—that comes from the other teachers. We have a really good staff here!” This year’s Academic WorldQuest subject categories are Current Events, Great Decisions 2009, Pandemics, Genocide, International Migration Trends, Food Production and Consumption, the World Cup, World Music, The Islands of the Caribbean, and The Sultanate of Oman. The Fall Mountain team has been preparing since last fall by reading web sites and print materials on all ten subjects and holding practice competitions to deepen their levels of expertise. Last Tuesday they held a final prep session on current events for several hours at Burdick’s Café in Walpole on their way to Brattleboro, and all expect to be reviewing their areas of concentration on their train ride down to Washington in April. Fall Mountain’s team divides up the subject list so each student has primary responsibility for developing expertise in two or three of the topics. In the competition, each multiple-choice question is projected before all the teams at once and they have 45 seconds to choose their team’s answer. As the Fall Mountain team has evolved its strategy, the team member responsible for a question’s subject usually takes charge suggesting an answer. He or she wordlessly points to a letter or number on the table as his or her choice of the correct answer to avoid giving away the team’s answer to another team at a nearby table. The other three team members then use the remainder of the 45 seconds to agree with the suggested answer or work out the team’s final answer before the next question comes up. Intense, whispered consultations, debates, and negotiations are the heart of the competition. “We try to make our questions here just as difficult as those they’ll encounter in Washington,” says Windham Council President Margo Neale. “But the questions in the finals are always incredibly difficult!” In addition to the competition itself in Washington, Coach Belsky arranges a team tour through the Capital Building and this year is hoping to tour the White House as well. Also, the World Affairs Councils of America usually organizes an ice-breaking, team-building event where students can meet members of the other teams on a social basis. Prentiss-Sturgill, whose topics are the World Cup and International Migration Trends, looks forward to the Washington tournament as “a lot more serious and difficult, but outside the actual room it’s loads of fun!” Grimsley, whose 2010 topics are world food supplies and pandemics and who expects to be studying robotic engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute next year, agrees. “It’s a great trip with my good friends!” Captain Sanchez-Navarro, whose main topics this year are the Caribbean and the Sultanate of Oman, says, “It’s ridiculously difficult, but we have so much fun.” As to her return to the national finals, “It’s the best ‘field trip’ I’ve ever been on, and I’m so excited to be going again!” --30--