Umatilla Battle of the Books

4/17/2010 12:01:00 AM Email this article • Print this article • Comment on this article


Umatilla Battle of the Books, DI place at state
Four seniors, one junior from Umatilla High come in third

JENNIFER COLTON
Reporter


Two teams from two schools in the Umatilla School District earned third-place in respective state competitions this weekend.

One of those teams was the Umatilla High School Battle of the Books team, who placed third in the state tournament, Saturday in Salem.

Saturday marked the first high school competition for the Oregon Battle of the Books tournament, which is sponsored by the Oregon Association of School Libraries. For the competition, the state is broken into seven regions, and the top two teams from each region advance to the state tournament. Umatilla High School represented region 6, librarian and Battle of the Books adviser Allen Kopf said.

With a team of four seniors and one junior - Angel Cole, Sunny Hayhurst, Kellie Hodges, Jacob Vandever and Mariah Holden - Umatilla High took third-place overall.

"I was pretty pleased with it. I think the kids were a little grumpy - they went with the goal that we were going to win it - but I was pleased," Kopf said.

Battle of the Books tests students on comprehension of 16 books chosen by a committee of school media specialists and librarians, teachers and public library representatives. Each competition includes a series of matches, and each match is a combination of questions about content and "in which book did...." questions, the librarian said.

"The emphasis is on the reading the students do, and they did really well. I was really pleasantly surprised when they were commended by one of the moderators for their sportsmanship," he said.