Blair places second in Knowledge Master Open

Blair placed second in the Spring 2005 Knowledge Master Open (KMO), an international bi-annual team trivia competition that Blair's "It's Academic" team participates in. The two-hour competition was held Tuesday, April 19 and results were announced Friday, April 22.

The Blair team scored 1,798 points out of a possible 2,000 points. Math teacher and "It's Academic" sponsor David Fantegrossi said the score was around the team's average in the past several years. "We've broken 1,800 once or twice in the past few years. We usually get first or second [place] with those scores," he said.

The KMO was held during 5A and 5B classes in room 247. "It's a two hour multiple choice test. It covers anything and everything. All branches of science, all branches of math, media, plays, novels, poetry," said Fantegrossi. "It's a team competition. It's the whole It's Ac[ademic] team. We also pulled some people from the math team, science bowl and some other people who were strong in areas we knew we needed help with." A total of 31 Blazers competed in this year's KMO.

During the KMO, which is run on several computer disks, team members call out answers to the questions appearing on the screen. "We have one captain, [senior] Saul Kinter, who kind of runs the whole thing," said Fantegrossi. Points are awarded both for accuracy and speed. Teams have two tries to get a question right but receive fewer points for the second attempt.

Blair took third place in the Fall 2004 KMO behind Thomas Jefferson High School (TJHS) of Science and Technology of Virginia and State College Area High School of Pennsylvania. In the Spring 2005 competition, TJHS took first place again with 1,824 points, third place went to Lakeside School of Washington state with 1,753 points and State College Area High School placed fourth with 1,752 points.

Below are the 31 students who participated in the spring 2005 KMO competition:

Seniors:
Doug Adams
Vivek Chellappa
Martino Choi
Abigail Fraeman
Edward Hsieh
Matt Jordan
Ana Karimi
Kevin Kahn
Saul Kinter (Captain)
Randy Li
Alex May
Bill McManigle
Alex Mont
Sheila Rajagopal
Amelia Sagoff
Max Wasserman
Sam Wight
Min Wu

Juniors:
Jeff Cao
Ben Green
Armin Rosen
John Silberholz
Ravi Umarji
David White
Mimi Zou

Sophomores:
Lois Bangiolo
David Gootenberg
Tim He
Christie Lin
Shaagnik Mukherji

Freshmen:
Christopher Silberholz