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– Jamestown High School #2 team won the state LifeSmarts championship, and will be representing North Dakota in the national competition to be held in Philadelphia. Jamestown’s #1 team took second place and Ray High School took third.

Eleven teams battled through several elimination rounds before the top three teams advanced to the final round. Parrell Grossman, director of the Consumer Protection Division, congratulated the three final teams, telling them “Any one of you will represent North Dakota phenomenally at nationals, and more importantly, you will carry this information with you as you go on to college and continue with your future.”

The students answered questions in five subject areas – personal finance, health and safety, the environment, technology, and consumer rights and responsibilities – such as “When you are online, what is the main purpose of cookies?” (The answer: to speed up the time it takes to load the page the next time you visit it.”)

The champion team members are: Declan O’Higgins (Captain), Kelsey Becker, Zach Fossen, Kyle Gee and Mariah Schlenker, led by Coach Marchel Krieger. Celebrating with his first and second place teams, Krieger said, “This is a credit to their hard work. The students put in a lot of time on this.”

Asked if the team had anything they wanted to say about their win, Declan O’Higgins, the #2 team captain, said “It’s like we’re going to Disneyland but we’re going to Philadelphia.” Zach Fossen and Kelsey Becker said they had so much fun that “the whole team was going to do it again next year.” “Probably the same team,” added Mariah Schlenker. Zach said he had one more thing to say before they had to leave – “Hi, Mom.”

The national competition will be held April 21-24, 2012.