BRAIN POWER

Imagine rewarding students to get out of doing homework, but that's what happened at Plains School last week when a dozen students calling themselves "Camo" were proclaimed champions in a near four-hour contest.

It was the school's annual Brain Bash competition with 15 teams of 201 students from seventh grade to seniors who demonstrated their brain power and athletic skills at 14 stations of competition with such drills as "Dart Game," "Defusing a Bomb," "Science Trivia," "Logic Puzzles" and "Finish the Lyrics." Each team had 11 minutes to achieve as many points as possible before moving on to the next station.

Students from Jobs For Montana Graduates, run by Kati Mitchell, and the National Honor Society, run by Heather Worrall, coordinated the event. The JMG students devised the theme and team names, but the teachers came up with their own contests. Some were traditional ones, such as Kyle Mitchell's "Jenga," and Mike Tatum's "Mini Golf," but there were also some first time competitions, like "Defusing a Bomb," put on by Kristen Cole and her daughter, Tanna Klammer, and "Mario Kart Tournament," by Austin Ransom. This was Mike Cole's first time to introduce "Bean Bag Toss" whereby a pair of students used a towel to heave a bean bag to targets some 15-20 feet distance. Because the Brain Bash was initially supposed to be held in December just before Christmas - school was closed due to the weather - Lisa Brown stuck with "Christmas Movie Jeopardy," which included shows from the 1940s to the 2000s. Points differed from station to station, but were usually a half to one point.

Teams were made up of students from seventh grade to seniors and range from 10 to 14 on a team. Several students dressed in their team's theme. Team Camo chalked up 118 points, followed by Football Players at 115.5 and Cowboys in third at 115 points. Each member of Camo received the coveted homework pass, although there were some stipulations on when they could use it, said Kati Mitchell. Second place winners each got a caramel apple sucker and third place received a package of candy. Team Disco achieved a score of 111 points with Hippies behind them with 109.5 points and Pink trailing with 108.5. Team Blackout finished in last place with only 77 points.

This was Kati Mitchell's first year running the JMG class, but she has helped with the program for six years. "I think it went really well. I believe all the kids had fun at some time this morning," said Mitchell, who believes the participants enjoy it because it's being led by the JMG students, who are all seniors, and it's also a break from a normal day of school. "Most of them look forward to the games. We post the teams a week before the event and in between every class they are all huddled around them excitedly talking about it," said Mitchell, who operated a general computer trivia contest at her station.

One of the more fun stations, according to students, was "Trick Shots" conducted by Marie Errecart and Lori Rehbein, who set up five stations that involved getting ping pong balls into different targets using varied methods. They initially had six stations, but discovered blowing ping pong balls from cups of water quickly got messy. At one station, students had to use blowing power to get a ball from one end of a table to the other and into a cup. At another, they utilized hair dryers to guide the ball into a cup. Thirteen teams received the maximum 10 points, which is prompting Rehbein and Errecart to tweak the game next time to make it more challenging. Ransom's "Mario Kart Tournament" video game might have had the highest score with six teams scoring 10 points and nine teams getting nine points.

"Remember, life should be fun and this is a great activity that the students and teachers both enjoy," said Ryon Noland, the high school principal. He added that the games provide a sense of teamwork between the classes, but that a lot of the students are very competitive.

Laura Hagerman's "Card Towers" was one of the more challenging stations, based on the consistent low scores. The students used playing cards to build multiple story structures and received points for each level of cards they made. Ten teams scored the minimum of two points. Teams Spooky, Cowboys, Hippies, and Camo received four points. Frat Boys were the high scorers with six points in Card Towers.

Students routinely scored high in Nicole Burrows' "Finish the Lyrics" with most teams collecting 10 points. The students saw low scores in Mike Cole's "Bean Bag Toss" game with 10 teams getting only one or two points. Team 90's got the highest with a mere five points. But the lowest scores of the day were at Tyrel Allen's basketball shooting with team Baseball netting the highest of 2.5 points. Four teams - Frat Boys, Spring Flowers, Animals, and Spooky - scored no points, while Mean Girls, Disco, 90's, Pink, Cowboys, and Camo each walked away with only one point apiece.

When it came to putting their brains to work, Jennifer Burchak's "Logic Puzzles" provided high team scores with the Animals and Baseball scoring the lowest at seven points. Camo and Hippies nabbed 10 points apiece, but the rest had eight or nine points. This was the first year for science teacher Brooks Sanford, who had a "Science Trivia" station, in which teams scored from two to 10 points.