BETTENDORF — Four teams from Lourdes Catholic School competed against 40 other teams from around the Quad-City area April 27 in the Rivermont Academic Invitational. The day was filled with challenges that stretched students’ thinking and promoted team work to solve complex problems.
Two teams from Lourdes secured first and second place. The students worked hard to prepare for the invitational, devoting their lunch hour twice a week for the past month to practice various challenges and compete against one another.
The first-place team will receive a check for $100 to go to a worthy cause of its choice. The students knew immediately where they wanted the check to go: the Colleen Gordon Benefit Fund, which has been established for their science teacher who is battling cancer. The students will present this check to Gordon to help her offset some medical expenses.
Members of the first-place team of eighth-graders were: Matt Tjaden, Kayla Carber, Gillian Straub and Jacob Phillips. The sixth-grade team, which won second place, consisted of: Nicki Blaum, Elizabeth Starr, Julia Krist and Alexis Cordts. Two other Lourdes teams consisted of seventh-graders Julia Field, Sean Lansing, Synclaire Lunardi and Peter Molyneaux, and eighth-graders Jack Schwirtz, David Polaschek, Jackie Blaum and Clare Carroll.
