Onalaska and Tumwater high schools proved their intelligence with eighth-place trophies at the 2025 Washington state Knowledge Bowl competition at Wenatchee High School Saturday, March 22.
Winlock, Tenino and W.F. West high schools also made the trip east to compete in the Knowledge Bowl, which tests students on topics such as math, science, history, language skills, literature and more through written and oral rounds.
Tumwater earned hardware at the Knowledge Bowl for the fourth straight year, while Onalaska picked up its first plaque since placing eighth in 2013. The Thunderbirds were one of 15 2A schools competing in Wenatchee, and the Loggers were among a group of 18 2B schools broken up into two divisions.
Participants, who compete in meets throughout the season and qualify for state through regional events, open the state meet with a written round where teams can work together to answer questions. In the four oral rounds, four people can sit at one time and the team captain will either answer or defer to a teammate.
Onalaska team captain Melissa Reiman has been a member of the Knowledge Bowl team for all four years of high school and was inspired to join the club as her older sister was the team captain. The sisters even got to be teammates when Reiman was a freshman and her sister was a senior.
“It’s been my favorite club throughout high school. I’ve learned that there’s a science behind a Knowledge Bowl,” Reiman said. “You may not necessarily know the answer, but if you work together and you can make an educated guess, a lot of times you’ll actually be right.”
Reiman was joined at state by sophomore Lilly Miller, sophomore Landon Buff, senior Taylor Babb, sophomore Morgan Allen and senior Taden Miller. The captain said the team’s strength this year was in its diversity, as each student has their own strengths and topics they know best.
Allen said the team’s chemistry and collective knowledge helped them take home a plaque from the competition and enjoy success throughout the season.
“One of the greatest things I saw was I accidentally buzzed after one word of the question was said, but it was somewhat indicative and the whole team worked together and got the question right based off of one word,” he said. “It was a great show of teamwork.”
Coach Mazen Saade said the group was “very well-rounded in their intelligence,” and not just the six that made it to state but the over 30 on the team.
“It’s a very intelligent group of kids. They’re a lot of fun to be around. We were really blessed to have this group of kids, and they had a good time and represented Onalaska very well,” Saade said.
A group of five Tumwater students qualified for state as the program continued its streak of state trips. Coach Doug Peltier said the group was a bit newer than the last three years but came together impressively to place eighth.
“They really did a nice job of discussing the questions after they rang in. When I was in high school back in the 1980s, you were not allowed to discuss with your teammates,” he said. “Our team captain was really good at listening to what all the kids had to say and then processing that and they usually ended up finding the right answer. They were also really good at knowing when to ring in to answer the question.”
Tenino qualified six students and an alternate to the state competition just one year after the revival of the school’s Knowledge Bowl program.
Coach Dave Montgomery praised the students for their skills and work ethic to bring the program back to state for the first time since 2009.
“The thing that really impressed me about our whole program was that almost everybody was in consideration for the first time that made it to state,” he said. “We have so many kids that are very good at Knowledge Bowl, and it made my job hard as their advisor to figure out who to take.”
