Nine advance to National History Day finals

A group of local students who are competing this week at the National History Day event in College Park, Md., have accomplished something quite rare.

Nine students who competed Tuesday will take four projects to the National History Day finals on Wednesday and will be ranked among the top 14 National History Day projects in the United States, Lowell Milken Center Director Norm Conard said during a telephone interview with The Tribune on Tuesday.

"It is normal for a state to have one or two finalists, but it's pretty unusual for one town to have four finalists ... it's extremely rare," Conard said. "No one town has four projects in the finals tomorrow and here are four from one town in Kansas. As far as we are able to determine, this has never happened before."

According to Conard, local students who earned spots in the national finals include Fort Scott Christian Heights students Marcus Page and Patricia Schafer for their Senior Group Performance titled "Camera Trails in Africa: Martin and Osa's Innovation," Fort Scott High School students Keenan Gregory, Megan Midkiff and Kaitlyn Russell for their Senior Group Performance titled "From Leadbelly to Lil Wayne: John Lomax and the American Sound," Theresa Schafer, a sophomore at FSCH, for her Senior Individual Performance titled "Amos Bronson: Inventor of Ideas," and Christian Learning Center students Joseph Fischer, Madelyn Stark and Haley Davis for their Senior Documentary titled "The Rats Say Yes."

Conard said the top projects representing each category at National History Day are chosen for a spot in the national finals. Local students' projects will be ranked among the top 14 in the nation on Wednesday during the national finals, and prizes will be awarded to winning students.

To make it to the national competition, the 12 local students first had to qualify for National History Day by finishing in first or second place in their category during the State History Championship in April at Washburn University in Topeka. All of the students who qualified for the national competition are from Fort Scott, and 10 of the 24 students who competed at nationals in the senior division are from Fort Scott. Nineteen local students advanced from the District History Day Championships to the State History Day Championships.

Local students who competed at National History Day but did not make the finals are CLC students Mary Fischer and Rebecca Young with their play about the life of Emily Newell Blair, a suffragette from Carthage, Mo.; and FSCH student Jared Bahr with his Senior Individual Website project titled "The Forgotten Man" about Andrew Higgins, who invented the boat that landed the D-Day troops from the 1st Infantry Division directly onto the sandy beaches of Normandy during World War II.

Types of projects at History Day include creative and original dramatic performances, media presentations, historical papers, three-dimensional exhibit projects, and website production. The in-depth research and study for the district, state and national competition takes place throughout the entire school year. The theme of this year's History Day is "Innovations in History: Impact and Change."

The national competition involves the top 2,500 students from across the nation, from more than 800,000 who compete in order to advance from local to state to national competition. All of the local students raised funds to help them attend the national competition. Conard said he and a group of 20 parents and other supporters made the trip with the students.

The students' coaches are Maria Bahr, Megan Felt and Gloria Fischer. The Lowell Milken Center worked with all local students to help them develop their projects.