Lakeshore Middle School Battle of the Books Team Places 3Rd in the STATE!

Lakeshore Middle School Battle of the Books Team places 3rd in the STATE!

The LMS team is comprised of Erin M (8th), Gabby L(7th), Mackenzie L(6th), Teryn M(6th), Anish N(6th), Jaylen P(6th), and Sumi V(6th) .

It all started with a win during the Iredell-Statesville Schools County competition on March 26. As part of the Northwest Region, the county winner then competed against the top 17 schools from the 14 counties in the Northwest Region. Lakeshore Middle won the Regional competition on April 7th.

The champion from each of the nine regions in North Carolina qualified to compete in the State Competition on May 1st. There are approximately 500 middle schools in North Carolina, and these nine schools competing at State were the best-of-the-best.

Competition was close, with Lakeshore in the top three all day. At lunchtime only 2 points separated the top three teams. Lakeshore is the only team from Iredell County that has ever advanced to State. In 2005, they finished 6th in the state. With their best finish ever, the Lakeshore team came home with a third place State trophy and an award that included a full set of books (27 copies) of next year’s Battle of the Books titles.

The North Carolina Battle of the Books competition is sponsored by the North Carolina School Library Media Association. Every year, NCSLMA chooses either 26 or 27 books for their official list. This year’s list included classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Land and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. BOB team members read all the books on the list.

During competition, questions are asked about the books and teams are awarded points for the providing the correct title and author within 20 seconds. The questions at State competition were very hard! Such as: In which book was a character as “thin as a fence post”? …over half of the books have skinny characters! Maybe one book said a character was as “skinny as a rail”…. But that would not have been the correct answer!

First place with 125 points was Norwayne Middle School from the Southeast Region. Second place was Oak Grove Middle School from the Piedmont Region with 121 points and Lakeshore Middle School came in third with a total of 120 points. Only TWO questions separated the top three teams.