Edgar Flores competes as a semifinalist

Edgar Flores, a seventh grader at Lewisburg Middle School, competed in the 2007 Tennessee Geographic Bee, sponsored by JPMorgan Chase. Held in the Ezell Center at Lipscomb University in Nashville on Friday, March 30, the bee saw students from across the state vying to win the contest and head on to compete in the national finals.

School-level bees were held in schools with fourth- through eighth-grade students; LMS's Flores won his school's bee for the second straight year. He then took a qualifying test, which was submitted to the National Geographic Society. In each of the 50 states and in the territories, the National Geographic Society invited the students with the top 100 scores to compete at the state level (over five million students participated in school bees--fewer than one in 1,000 qualified for their state bees). Edgar qualified.

As a semifinalist at the Tennessee Geographic Bee, Edgar held his own as questions were posed to all the contestants. He came up short in making it to the top ten, but according to LMS Bee coordinator Melanie Wiles, "Edgar did great. The ones he missed, I didn't know, either! The questions at that level are incredibly hard. I think all the kids who made the top 10 didn't miss any -- they were amazing."

In addition to Mrs. Wiles, this local seventh grader was accompanied to the state bee by his mother, Teresa Medina.