Six Northwestern Oklahoma State University students are once again competing in “Mind Games,” an Oklahoma Academic Challenge that brings together teams of students from Oklahoma colleges and universities to compete in a weekly battle of the brains. Airing Sunday, March 24, at 6 p.m., on KSBI, these students will demonstrate their collegiate knowledge and compete against Rogers State for scholarship awards.
Visit http://www.ksbitv.com/mind-games to watch Northwestern play “Mind Games.” It also can be seen on Cox channel 7, or Cox HD channel 707, DirecTV and Dish channel 52 or on Suddenlink channel 12 in Alva.
The team is led by Shannon Leaper, team coach and research and instructional services librarian. This is Leaper’s first year as team coach.
“I love being the ‘Mind Games’ team coach, but before last semester I’d never done anything like this,” Leaper said. “I was offered the opportunity last fall and jumped at the chance to work with such a great bunch of dedicated students.”
Last year, Northwestern’s “Mind Games” team made it into the semi-finals and received more than $7,000 in scholarship awards.
All teams receive scholarship awards either as a consolation prize or as the week’s winning team. Teams are comprised of three players and up to three alternates who may be substituted in during the games.
The KSBI "Mind Games" utilizes the toss-up/bonus format. Questions are formatted from all topics of collegiate knowledge. The bulk of the questions come from the areas of science, history and literature. Fine arts and humanities will be the next emphasis area followed by geography, current events and pop culture.
Northwestern’s “Mind Games” team usually practices four to five days a week for several hours at a time.
A wide range of Northwestern students with various majors are competing on this year’s team. Participants, listed by name, hometown, classification and major include: Lukas Dollarhide, Tonkawa senior, history; Bimala Gurung, Kaski (Nepal) junior, mass communications; Zechariah Burdg, Enid freshman, English; Matt Schneider, Enid freshman, biology; Jennifer Hilgeman, Beaverton (Ore.) sophomore, chemistry; and Nathan Sacket, Aline junior, computer science.
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