Saturday morning, I ran through my regular weekday routine – up with the alarm, shower, coffee, walk Lucy – before heading out the door. I wasn’t on my way to school, I was on my way to our regions OBOB tournament.
OBOB is short for Oregon Battle of the Books and I was taking in a group of wiggly sixth grade boys, who I hoped knew their 16 books well enough to come out on top. They had battled through january and February to come out on top at our school. Today we’d find out if they had the stuff to get to the State finals.
Our very large and heavily populated region has been broken into three mini-regions. We should have had 16 teams, but apparently only ten would be showing up.
“That could be good,” I told the team late last week at a before school practice.
“But not if the weak teams dropped out,” replied one of the four. Too, true.
We arrived Saturday morning and looked over the four battles we’d have in the round robin portion of the morning. I was glad we were in the half of the teams that would be rotating – these boys needed to move between battles, not sit in the same room.
By the end of the round robin we had won all four matches and were hopeful we’d end up in the final four. We waited with the other 9 teams in the school cafeteria for the results were posted. As we waited, cupcakes arrived at a neighboring table and “Happy Birthday” could be heard. We all joined in. The more cupcakes arrived at another table and a second round of singing filled the room. What a way to spend your birthday!
A hush fell as the chairperson arrived to post the tallied points. We had the highest point total!
And then we were off to the next battle. We were now in sudden death elimination battles and this was a tough one. Fortunately, the boys prevailed and we were in the final.
The final was made up of 32 questions, twice as many as the preceding rounds. I was nervous after the last match, but the boys were cool-headed and prevailed, beating the other team 95 to 35, and earning a trip to the State final.
I gave the boys the option to not meet to practice next week, and that we’d start up again after Spring Break. They would have none of it. They are excited about representing our school and our District and are eager to stay at the top of their game.
Wish us luck!
booksandbassets 