The Eden Valley-Watkins Knowledge Bowl team will make an appearance at the state tournament Thursday and Friday at Cragun’s Conference Center in Brainerd.

The team of Simon Kern, Rheanne Zimmerman, Drew Stommes and Alexa Bulau placed second in Class A at the regional competition March 31 at Celebration Church in Sartell. The top two teams in each section advance to state. Class AA teams earning state berths were St. Cloud Tech, Sauk Rapids-Rice and Sartell.

St. John’s Prep came out on top among Class A schools with 112.5 points, followed by EV-W with 102 points. The third place Class A team was Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted with 91 points.

The EV-W Knowledge Bowl team is coached by Julie Bulau and assistant coach Renae Ward.

Forty-eight teams from throughout Minnesota will be competing at the state meet. They are divided by school population into Class A and Class AA.

Team member Zimmerman will be replaced by Jeremy Meyer. Zimmerman and Bulau also qualified for the state speech tournament set for Friday in St. Paul. Since there was no way they could be two places at once, Zimmerman will compete at speech since it is her first qualification. Bulau, on the other hand, qualified in discussion for the second consecutive year and opted to compete with knowledge bowl this year.

This is the third state tournament appearance for EV-W. Teams also qualified in 2000 and 2002.

This is also the third team from EV-W to advance to a state tournament this school year. The football team made its fourth straight state appearance in November and the One-Act play cast made its first state appearance in February.