Battle of the Books wins go to Woodington Middle, Kinston High
Woodington Middle School picked up its second consecutive win and Kinston High School scored a revenge victory as LCPS middle schools and high schools squared off in back-to-back Battle of the Books contests on Friday.
The Woodington team edged out the team from Contentnea-Savannah K-8 School in the middle school battle that also saw strong performances from teams representing EB Frink Middle School and Rochelle Middle School.
“This was as competitive a Battle of the Books as I can remember,” said Christel Carlyle, LCPS’s director of middle school education and the tournament organizer. “I was excited to see that each school won at least one game.”
Each year, the Battle of the Books tests students’ knowledge of books from a common reading list of fiction and nonfiction titles through questions related to content. Friday’s event for middle schools and high schools was held at the Performing Arts Center on the campus of Kinston High School. Tanya Cahoon, media coordinator at South Lenoir High School, moderated the middle school contest. Carlyle moderated the high school battle.
The win for Woodington was its 10th in the last 12 contests and marked another close encounter with Contentnea-Savannah, which won in 2021. This year, the two rivals split their head-to-head matchups and CSS led after the first of the two rounds. But Woodington piled up the points in the second round to win by nine. The team from EB Frink Middle finished third and the team from Rochelle Middle finished fourth.
Teams compete in a round-robin format. The middle school reading list consists of 16 books.
“We came in to win,” said Missy Perritt, the media coordinator who coaches the Woodington team with English Language Arts teacher Jessica Montgomery. “We put together a strong team, kids who can work together and talk together and come up with the correct answer in the right amount of time.”
Only four of the 12 team members are returning veterans. Among the newcomers are a number of sixth graders who competed in the elementary school Battle of the Books last year. “Moss Hill sent us a lot of really good students,” Perritt said, giving a nod to the school that won the elementary contest in 2022.
Kadence Thigpen, an eighth grader, gravitated to the team as a sixth grader because “I like to read,” she said. Still, she admits the competition takes what is usually a solitary pleasure to a new level. “I like that I get to meet new people and have a good strong team,” Kadence said.
As the district winner, Woodington will represent LCPS in the regional Battle of the Books for middle schools in April in Wayne County.
In the high school Battle of the Books, Kinston High and South Lenoir High squared off in six games and each team won three. But Kinston High’s margin of victory in its wins gave it a nine-point lead when the final score was tallied.
“I don’t think we could have asked for a better competitor today than South Lenoir,” said Sara Levin, the Kinston High media coordinator who coaches the team with Lindsay Harts. Last year, the first year of a district high school competition, South Lenoir won the title.
Kinston’s seven-member team consists of only two seniors, so practice time was devoted to familiarizing them with the battle as much as with the 16 books on the reading list.
“My team’s been meeting about every week for several months now and focusing on reading the books first. Once we got closer to the competition, we started running the questions and then added in the competition format on top of the questions,” Levin said.
“I’m really tickled with how my team has been supportive of each other, how they’ve really looked for where the holes are and filled those in as best they can. They’ve already got a game plan going into the regional competition.”
That event is scheduled for April in Wilmington.
Woodington_middle
Members of the Woodington Middle School team, winners of the 2023 LCPS Middle School Battle of the Books, are, from left, front, Joshua Stroud, Kaylee Taylor, Tyler Villasenor-Medina, Evelyn Garcia, Kadence Thigpen and Oralia Garcia Lopez; back, Coach Missy Perritt, Joanna Prybylinski, Landon Loftin, Kailey Jones, Rosealynne Terrio, Samuel Hernandez, Alia Brown and Coach Jessica Montgomery.
Kinston High
Members of the Kinston High School School team, winners of the 2023 LCPS High School Battle of the Books, are, from left, Coach Lindsey Harts, Isaiah Williams, Taliah Malone, Lilly Lewin, Jasmine Reynolds and Coach Sara Levin. Not pictured are team members Zahara Jackson, Tayona Ormsby and Alissa Jones.
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