Landon Pottebaum and Beckham Cothren walked out of Wright City High School on March 7 with a big honor.

The Montgomery County sophomores received all-Eastern Missouri Conference honors for the first time after turning in solid efforts at the EMO Scholar Bowl meet, which was held in five classrooms at Wright City.

The top eight scorers in the preliminary round earn all-conference honors. Pottebaum and Cothren picked up the final two spots of the all-conference team, finishing in a tie for seventh with an average of 36.6 points. They received their awards during a brief ceremony at the school’s cafeteria before the semifinal round.

“It’s a super big honor, even as a sophomore,” Pottebaum said. “It’s something that doesn’t happen a lot because it is based on points per game. But I’m really proud of how Beckham and I showed up and we did great.”

Now, Pottebaum and Cothren are setting their sights on bigger and better things at the Class 4, District 2 meet, which will be held on April 15 at Hallsville High School. Last year, MCHS was eliminated in the district semifinals.

“Unfortunately, our district is super hard this year,” Pottebaum said. “But I think with how we showed up (at conference), if we go in the right mindset, we can do very well.”

The sophomores helped the Wildcats reach the semifinal round of the EMO meet, where they lost 240-230 to North Callaway. North Callaway clinched the victory after getting the correct answer in the final question of the match, which was related to science.

The Wildcats trailed 120-40 at halftime before rallying to take a 220-210 lead going into the final category, which was miscellaneous. North Callaway answered the miscellaneous toss-up question correctly to tie the match and give itself three bonus questions on science. After the Thunderbirds got the first question right, MCHS answered the next question correctly to tie the match. Then North Callaway’s Sarah Chapman ended the Wildcats’ hopes for a trip to the finals by getting the final question correct.

After preliminaries, MCHS was in a six-way tie for second place, but earned a spot in the semifinals due to a tiebreaker. The Wildcats lost 310-200 to Clopton in their first match, but beat Mark Twain (260-200) and Silex (320-230) in the next two matches.

“Last year, I remember we had a 2-1 record,” Pottebaum said. “The other four best teams in the prelims were 3-0, which was kind of unfortunate for us because we played really well. We didn’t win the conference that year and were all sad. But this is definitely a great comeback. Making it to the semifinals was a great honor.”

Seniors Cora Johnson and Trenton Moose and sophomore Bryson Nichols rounded out the Wildcats.

The conference meet was part of a busy day for Cothren, who also attended a science fair and went to track practice early in the morning.

“I’m a little tired, but I still enjoy it,” said Cothren, who is in his first year with the MCHS Scholar Bowl team.

Cothren was successful in the history category throughout the meet. He answered three questions correctly against Silex and one against North Callaway.

“I always loved history and it was a chance for me to show it off,” Cothren said.

Pottebaum, who joined the team last year, scored points in topics such as current events, history, literature and math.

“I’m really big on geography, history, theology and sometimes literature and science,” Pottebaum said. “It’s hard because I didn’t take any of the upper-level classes like science, physics and chemistry.”

Pottebaum said he already has high hopes for his team next year since it is losing two members to graduation.

“I’m hoping we’ll have a good year just like this year,” the sophomore said. “We have high expectations.”

Also, Wellsville-Middletown finished with a 1-2 record, but didn’t qualify for the semifinal round. The Tigers beat Van-Far 240-160, but lost to Bowling Green 220-140 and Elsberry 230-160. Juniors Meagan Cripe, AJ Sherwood and Ethan Vance, sophomores Hunter Bickell and Jonah Slovensky and freshman Jonathan Pike made up the W-M squad.