It turns out that Nicolas Slawski is going to have competition from Verona when he goes to the National Geographic Society’s New Jersey state Geography Bee next weekend.
Philip Chivily, a sixth grader at Our Lady of the Lake School, is also a finalist, thanks to his hard work and the guidance of OLL teacher Marilyn Kessler.
The state bee will be held at Rowan University, way down in south Jersey off exit 4 of the Turnpike. Chivily and Slawski will start the day assigned to one of five groups of students. They must work their way through eight rounds of questions, and the top ten students out of all the groups qualify for the finals. In the first eight rounds, participants give their answers orally, but in the finals they will face oral, written, and identification questions.
The state champion gets $100 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the finals, which will be held on May 20 to 22.
