Waverly grabs 2nd and 5th at State!

Pardon the running interruption but Waverly, my fifth grader at Abercrombie Academy in Spring, took 2nd place in Art Memory (aka "Art Smart") and tied for 5th place in Maps, Graphs and Charts at the Private Schools Interscholastic Association class AA competition today in Fort Worth on the TCU campus.

As I mentioned earlier, Waverly was the only student in her school (1st through 5th grades) that went to state in three (3) subjects and today was the only student in her grade - from her school - to return home with two medals! (I'm not sure if there was another student from her school that took home two medals.)

They have a process called "verification" where a parent and the student goes into a room with all of the other contestants and they hand out the test that the student took with the answer key. When they called her name to come get her test (for Art Memory), it had "2nd" written on it. She was a little surprised but it was her best subject of the three.

After the tests were verified, they called everybody else in and then they handed out medals going in reverse order. For those of you who are parents and have seen your children compete in something and do well, there isn't a better joy in the world! Dad had a hard time fighting back a tear or two.

Earlier in the afternoon, she had received her written evaluation from her poetry performance and found out after her last competition that she hadn't advanced. I thought she would be a little bit more disappointed than she was (but I'm not quite sure what that meant.)

When we went to the "verification" and awards process for Maps, Graphs and Charts, it was a little bit different in the sense that her place wasn't written on her test (but she knew her score). She had answered 39 correct and 3 wrong for a score of 189 (5 points for each right answer and 2 off for each wrong one). She was a little unsure if that was going to be enough because she was 2nd in district with a score of over 200.

They then began to read the list of qualifiers (those that didn't place) and I was getting nervous that she might not place; however, she tied for 5th with another student. They also announced the winning score of 209 -- meaning she wasn't far from placing higher. I'll tell you though that some of the questions were tough (even with having an atlas with her). One question was: "Including Quito, Ecuador, how many capitals are south of the Equator?"

This was one she missed, but I'm thinking, "Wow, that's tough for a 5th grader."

One that she missed that I was jokingly disappointed of her was that she missed what state was closest to the capitol of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg). Why? My family is from there and on summer vacation two years ago, we left Frederick, Maryland one morning and drove straight north to Gettysburg and then Harrisburg. She should have known from that! We had a good laugh about it.

A great day overall for the state runnerup and finalist!