Rose basketball highlights
FRI.| 4-12-24 | ENTERTAINMENT
Issue 1
September 27th, 2019
Battle of the Books team opts out of regionals
SUN. | 04-24-22 | NEWS
On Monday, Mar. 21, Rose’s Battle of the Books team competed in their county competition. With a fourth place finish, they were able to keep competing and advance to regionals, but opted out.
The competition took place in the lecture hall at Rose and consisted of eight teams from Pitt County. During the competition, a series of questions are asked about books from a list released by the organization. There are six people from each team that sit at a table and answer questions. Each school competes in seven rounds of competition. This way, each team has a round against every other team at the competition. During each round, the school earns more points, and those are tallied at the end. Rose won or tied all of their rounds, but did not
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win the rounds by a margin that was substantial enough to build up enough points to win.
“We won six out of our seven rounds and tied the other,” Instructional Coach Michael Flinchbaugh. “It is not scored [by how many rounds you win], but we did really well and did not lose any rounds; our point total was just not high enough.”
The team had to overcome their coach, former Rose librarian Amanda McDaniel, retiring earlier this semester in order to participate in the competition. The now coachless team had to search to find someone to replace McDaniel in order to continue the season. According to the club rules, a coach must be a certified librarian and a member of the North Carolina School Library Media Association. No staff member at Rose fit this criteria, but Flinchbaugh was set on helping them get a coach.
“[The school] got approval to let me fill in when Ms. McDaniel retired,” Flinchbaugh said. “They had to ask multiple people up the line until they got to whoever was in charge of it [to get me the approval].”
In March of the previous school year, the Battle of the Books released 15 books that the questions at the next year's competition will be based off of. The questions are on characteristics that are specific to only one of the books, and the team will have time to consolidate and then give an answer with the book title and author. If the team who buzzed first gets it wrong and the second team gets it wrong, the first team will get another shot to obtain the points. Every member did not read all fifteen books, so it is important that within the six people the team chose, all the books have been read.
“I had not read all the books, but you can always count on some person on the team reading the books you did not,” senior Nikita Sadhale said. “I felt worried [when McDaniel retired], but I was really happy when they got Mr. Flinchbaugh and we were able to compete.”
Although the Rose Battle of the Books team was met with a challenge when their coach retired mid-season, they placed fourth in their county-wide competition.
