By Keisha McDuffie/ne news editor
The 2006 College Bowl regional tournament was deemed a success for both the NE and NW campuses.
Competing in different divisions at this year’s tournament, the NE Campus team finished fourth in it division and NW Campus finished seventh in its division.
Bonnie Creel, associate professor of speech, accompanied Terry Barriere, Robert Brauer, Jesse Gandee and David Thompson to the University of North Texas in Denton, where this year’s College Bowl was held.
NE Campus placed ninth over all. A few of the schools TCC finished ahead of were the University of Houston-Downtown, Texas A&M-Kingsville and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Baylor, Rice and Texas Tech were among the universities that finished ahead of TCC.
This was the first year for each of the students to participate in the College Bowl. The students, in years past, have all graduated or moved on to universities. All of the NE students, with the exception of Brauer, are sophomores.
Student turnover is the hardest part about having teams from a junior college Creel said.
“ Since I’ve been involved, we haven’t had any returning players, so I am hoping next year will be different,” she said.
“ The best news is Robert is a freshman, so, unless something causes him to transfer, he may be back next year. This will be a great starting point for next year‘s team.”
Many of the teams that TCC faced included players Creel has seen for the last four years.
“ Some have added a new freshman as a senior graduates, so the team has some continuity,” she said. “The teams that finished at the top all had several
returning players.”
There are 15 regions in the nation for the College Bowl. Sixteen schools from three states—Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas—were set to participate in the region 12 tournament. TCC was the only community college that competed in this region.
All of the participating schools, in each region, are split into two divisions. Each division consists of eight schools, but this year one university canceled at the last minute, leaving one division with only seven teams.
Every school competes against other schools in its division in the semi-final round. Then the top two schools from each division face each other in a double-elimination. In the finals, the highest-ranking school from each division competes against its counterpart in the other division.
“ Questions come from every conceivable category, including government, art, sports of all kinds, music, religion, math, current events, popular culture, science, drama … you name it,” Creel said. “So this is really quite a test of knowledge.”
Brauer, the NE team captain, finished third in the individual scoring in his division (out of 32 students) and sixth overall, scoring higher than 69 other students participating in the entire tournament.
This is the fourth year Creel has been involved in the College Bowl, and she said she could not have asked for a better team.
“ They [the students] all had wonderful attitudes and were just a pleasure to work with,” Creel said. “Each of them contributed, not only with the correct answers at the tournament, but with a very nice esprit de corps in general.”
