ROYAL CITY - The Royal High School Knowledge Bowl team had a dream turn to nightmare in a matter of hours. The result is the Knights missed the state tournament by one point.

It all happened at the regional meet, where the top two teams qualified for state. Royal was in second place after the first oral round and kept that spot through the rest of the competition.

"We went home ready to head on to state," coach Eric Carlson said.

Then a mistake in the scoring was discovered, and it was ruled that Royal and White Swan had tied. The mistake was not made by Royal contestants or officials.

"The reader in the oral round has the job to judge if the response is correct," Carlson said. "The reader is a volunteer who does not have any particular expertise. They only know the answer because they have the key in front of them.

"If a team gives an answer that is different from the key, the reader will not award them the point. However, some answers might not match the key exactly, but are still worth the point.

"For example. if the answer in the key says y = 9 - 7x and the team says -7x + 9 = y, the reader might not know that those are mathematically equivalent."

When the final scores were posted showing White Swan one point behind, Cougar officials challenged a question. An extra point was added to the Cougar score when the challenge was upheld.

"This should have been resolved then and there, with Royal and White Swan going head to head again in an oral tie breaker round," Carlson said. "The mistake was not discovered until after we went home."

White Swan and Royal did not want to travel for an oral tie breaker. They agreed to a written tie-breaker test, proctored at the school by an administrator. White Swan scored 19 points and Royal 18.

"They are letting us keep the second-place plaque. They'll make another for White Swan," Carlson said.

The Knowledge Bowl regional meet consists of four rounds: one written and three oral.

The written round is a team test that is multiple choice. Team members work together to answer the 60 questions in 45 minutes. Each correct response is worth a point.

In the oral rounds, the teams go head to head. A reader asks a question off a test sheet and, as soon as a team member wants to answer, he or she buzzes in.

The team that buzzes in first then gets to answer. If they are correct, they get a point. If incorrect, the other team may attempt to answer and earn the point.

After an oral round of 45 questions, the teams switch rooms and go head to head against new teams. The points from each round are added to a running total, and the running total is what matters.

After all the rounds have been played, the two teams with the highest scores advance to state.