Camarillo High Takes Top Geography Honors

Correctly determining the nation’s most populous state capital allowed a Camarillo High School team to win Geography Bowl VII on Saturday at Oxnard College.

“We took first and second for the second year in a row,” said Bill Miles, a social studies teacher at the school, which entered three teams in this year’s tournament. It took 18 tiebreakers, he said, to separate the top two teams.

More than 135 high school students from Thousand Oaks to Ventura constituting 30 teams took part in the round-robin ecology, geography and economics quiz.

The winning team receives a helicopter ride courtesy of Jim McCrory, a senior pilot with Oxnard-based Aspen Helicopters.

Winning team members were seniors Brandon Minster and Carla Riela, sophomores Marlana Evans, Dennis Mishler and Aimee White, and junior Lucais Sewell.

Minster also claimed the individual title based on his responses to a 50-question written multiple-choice test. Junior Kevin McDonald, a member of Camarillo High’s second-place team, came in second in the individual competition after finishing third last year.

“It’s proved that geography isn’t as boring as some people make it out,” Miles said. “You have to know your world around you.”

And the answer to the decisive tiebreaker? Phoenix, Ariz., not, as the second-place team concluded, Atlanta, Ga.