Chesterton High School won a state championship in the fourth-year division and was runner-up in the second-year division at the Japanese Olympiad of Indiana at Earlham College in Richmond on Saturday. Three other CHS teams just missed the final round and finished in fourth-place. This was the tenth Japan Bowl/Japanese Olympiad state championship for CHS.

The Japanese Olympiad of Indiana is an academic competition for second, third and fourth-year students with categories including speaking, culture, kanji (Chinese characters), proverbs, listening, history, and onomatopoeic expressions.

The CHS fourth-level team of Clay Thomas, Charlie Cook and Anna Pesut defeated Bloomington North and Highland in the final round. This was the second consecutive state championship for Thomas and Pesut, and Chesterton’s tenth overall. The other fourth-year team of Dan Banghart, Jack Conrick and Dylan Harmison finished in fourth-place out of fourteen teams.

The third-year team of Julia Puent, Storm Anderson and Olivia Gordon finished in fourth-place in the sixteen-team division.

In the second-level final, Brandon Moore, Ryan Gorman and Celia Moordian finished in second-place, narrowly losing to Elkhart Memorial by one question. Chesterton finished ahead of Bloomington North. The other second-year team of DJ Gallagher and Carly Hoffman finished in fourth-place out of twenty teams.

Fifty teams from fourteen high schools competed in this year’s competition. During the competition, team members had an opportunity to participate in Japanese modern and traditional cultural activities, which included traditional games, origami, movies, video games, hanafuda card game, and a taiko drumming workshop put on by San Jose Taiko of California. Exchange student and assistant coach, Maya Tsuaki, also accompanied the teams.