• Home
  • Releases
    • General Announcements
    • Science and Exploration
    • Magazines
    • Travel
    • Maps and Products
    • Kids
    • Books
    • Events and Exhibitions
    • Education
    • Digital Media
    • Apps and Games
    • Entertainment
    • Contests
  • Contacts
  • Bios
    • Executive Bios
    • Explorers
    • Staff Experts
  • About
    • Boilerplate
    • Milestones
  • FAQs
    • Press Inquiries
    • Photo Requests
    • Employment
    • Customer Service
    • Submissions

Tine Valencic from Texas Wins 2011 National Geographic Bee and $25,000 College Scholarship

Students from Georgia and Kansas Take Second and Third Place

May 25, 2011

Tine Valencic, 13, a seventh-grader at Colleyville Middle School in Colleyville, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, took top honors at the 23rd annual National Geographic Bee held in Washington, D.C., today. He won a $25,000 college scholarship, lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society and a trip for two to the Galápagos Islands provided by National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions.

Second-place winner and recipient of a $15,000 college scholarship was Georgia’s Nilai Sarda, 11, a seventh-grader at The Westminster School in Atlanta. Third place and a $10,000 college scholarship went to Kansas’ Stefan Petrović, a 13-year-old seventh-grader at South Junior High School in Lawrence.

The winning question was: Thousands of mountain climbers and trekkers rely on Sherpas to aid their ascent of Mount Everest. The southern part of Mount Everest is located in which Nepalese national park? Answer: Sagarmatha National Park.

Fifty-four state and territory winners took part in the preliminary rounds of the 2011 National Geographic Bee on Tuesday, May 24. The top 10 finishers in the prelims met in today’s final round, which was moderated by “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek. The seven other finalists, who won $500, were Andrew Hull, 10, of Alaska: Luke Hellum, 13, of Arizona; Tuvya Bergson-Michelson, 10, of California; Kevin Mi, 13, of Indiana; Karthik Karnik, 13, of Massachusetts; Alex Kimn, 13, of South Dakota; and Anthony Cheng, 12, of Utah.

National Geographic Channel will air the Bee competition as well as the journey of the finalists from the state competitions through the finals over four nights beginning Monday, June 13, at 6:30 p.m. ET. Today’s finals also will be broadcast later on public television stations, presented by Maryland Public Television. Check local listings for viewing dates and times.

The top 10 national finalists from both 2011 and 2010 are eligible to be selected for the three-person U.S. team at the National Geographic World Championship to be held at various locales in the San Francisco area in July 2011, with the finals taking place at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Nearly 5 million students from more than 12,000 schools took part in the 2011 National Geographic Bee, which was sponsored by Google

NOTE
For b-roll of the winning moment and the award presentation, go to http://press.nationalgeographic.com/downloads/bee_2011 (username: press | password: press).

Profiles of the 54 competitors can be found on National Geographic’s online press room at http://bit.ly/GeoBee2011 (username: press | password: press). For videos of many of the finalists, go to http://www.youtube.com/nationalgeographic.

###

Media Contact

For first-place winner: Stephanie Montgomery, (202) 857-5838, smontgom@ngs.org
For second-place winner: Anna Kukelhaus, (202) 775-6717, akukelha@ngs.org
For third-place winner: Anna Irwin (202) 862-8267, airwin@ngs.org

###

  More »

Media Contact

Stephanie Montgomery
National Geographic
smontgom@ngs.org
202-857-5838

Recent Press Releases

  • National Geographic’s World-Renowned Photographers Celebrate Earth Day 2018 with Flash Print Sale April 20, 2018
  • National Geographic Celebrates Earth Day 2018 Across Multiple Platforms April 19, 2018
  • National Geographic Announces First-Ever Custom Content Special to Launch on Weekly Travel Block Programming April 17, 2018
  • National Geographic Launches ‘Open Explorer’ Community Platform — First of Its Kind Digital Field Journal — By and For Explorers April 17, 2018

Releases by Date

Releases by Category

© 1996-2018 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.