Bay Area Students Compete in State Geographic Bee

Students from across California showed off their geography skills Friday at the 22nd annual statewide National Geographic Bee. A total of 102 students, their families and teachers filled the recital hall of Consumnes River College in Sacramento with nervous, excited energy as they prepared to take on questions ranging from United States airport codes to current events in other countries.

To get to the state competition, students had to win a competition hosted by their school and place in the top 100 on a qualifying test--a feat that state bee coordinator Dr. Stephen Cunha said isn’t an easy task.

“It’s difficult, students, to reach any state academic final,” Cunha, a professor and chairman of the geography department at Humboldt State University, said as he addressed the students before the competition began. “But we have the 'mega bee' here; we have 10 percent of the nation’s students, so if you can make it in California, you can make it anywhere.”

Jeffrey Hong, 12, a sixth-grader at Santa Rita Elementary School, participated in the bee for the first time. An aspiring computer engineer, he's fond of geography's ability to map out the world for travelers.

"It’s like if you go traveling in the future, then you’ll know where everything is," said Hong.

Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, Plum Creek Timber Company and Google, the competition split the fourth-through-eighth-grade students into five groups of 20 for eight preliminary rounds. The 10 students with the highest scores went on to the final round in the recital hall later that day.

A record-breaking 24 students obtained perfect scores, prompting a semi-final tiebreaking round. The round lasted about half an hour until only 10 students were standing—Thomas Horn from Piedmont, Giorgio Cico from Fairfax, Kenan Perry from Tiburon, Namit Mishra from Sunnyvale, Francis Le from San Jose, Tuvya Bergson-Michelson of Hillsborough, Saransh Gupta from nearby San Ramon, Viba Vijayakumar from San Marcos, Nikhil Palanki from Solana Beach and Isaac Gray from San Diego.

Tuvya Bergson-Michelson won the finals, the first time the prize went to a fourth-grader, winning $100, a digital copy of every National Geographic published and a trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the national competition in May. Second-place winner Thomas Horn received $75 and a digital copy of National Geographic. Namit Mishra placed third and got $50 plus a digital copy of National Geographic.

• The winning question: “What country is the only predominately Muslim country to have a currency called the rupee?”
• The answer: Pakistan.

Here’s a look at some of the amazing and talented students who competed in the bee:

Justin Cheon, 13, is in eighth grade at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino. He’s been competing in his school’s Geography Bee since sixth grade, but has been interested in geography since reading a Geo Whiz book in third grade.

Bonnie Chen, 13, from Danville, is an eighth-grader at Diablo Vista Middle School. In this, her second (and final) year at the bee, she laments the fact that she will no longer be able to participate in all the school activities she loves when she enters high school. She’s been on her school’s Math Counts team, was in Odyssey of the Mind and won first place with another student in the school’s science fair.

“The learning itself is really interesting,” Chen said of the competitions she’s been in. “It’s fun to learn new things. The only problem is when I learn about something really interesting and cool, they never ask me about it.”

At the younger end of the spectrum was 10-year-old Jeffrey Khau from Danville, a fourth-grader at Montair Elementary School. He loves learning about the cultural aspect of geography and has studied it for quite some time.

“I started reading about it in kindergarten,” Khau said. “I was curious and I kept asking my mom questions, and then she just told me to start reading books about it.”

Cupertino student Srikar Boinapally, 11, is in sixth grade at Lawson Middle School. This was his first year competing in the Bee, but he has liked reading maps for years. He also likes studying history and loves learning about the ancient Greeks.

Trisha Agrawal, 13, from Thornton Junior High School in Fremont has competed in the bee for three years. She’s traveled to India, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. She enjoys math and wants to get into medicine when she’s older.

“I first got interested in geography when I used to go shopping with my mom at the supermarket,” Agrawal said. “I’d look at the labels to see where each food came from.”

The National Geographic Bee will take place on May 24-25 in Washington, D.C. The top 55 students from all over the country will compete for the grand prize—a $25,000 college scholarship, a lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society and a trip to the Galapagos Islands.