The top 100 school champions from throughout the state, as identified by the National Geographic Society, assembled last Friday at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, for the 19th Washington Geographic Bee.

Among the contestants were three school champions from Ballard: Genevieve Miner, a seventh-grader at Saint Alphonsus; Jackson Riepe, an eighth-grader at Salmon Bay School; and Ian Bellows, an eighth-grader at Whitman Middle School.

The morning preliminary round, of eight questions each, was necessarily brutal. Its aim - to reduce the field from 100 down to 10. It successfully cut the Ballard contingent from three to one. With four correct answers each, neither Miner nor Riepe advanced to the afternoon finals.

Notwithstanding the terribly tongue-tied moderator, Ian Bellows breezed. He was one of eight students to score all 8 of 8 in the morning session.

The final round was double elimination. Inauspiciously, Bellows' opening question became his first miss of the day. He wasn't alone. Five others also missed their respective opening questions concerning state mottoes.

Question No.2, a European map question, was kinder. Question No. 3, a U.S. city/river question, was not, and Bellows had to exit the competition with his second incorrect answer. He, along with two others, tied for eighth in the state. He thus did not have the opportunity to answer subsequent questions like this: Siberia is to Russia as Moravia is to ____? (The answer is the Czech Republic.)

Clearly, when they get older, Bellows, Riepe, and Miner will not be among the six out of 10 18-24 year olds who cannot locate Iraq on a map of the Middle East. The 2007 school, state, and national bees are sponsored financially by the global financial services firm of J.P. Morgan Chase.