Dundee 6th-graders in state finals for Lincoln trivia bowl

Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, died of what disease?

The answer, says Karri Haiges, 12, is milk sick, caused by drinking poisoned milk from cows that had eaten the wild snakeroot plant.

Karri, a sixth-grader at Lakewood Middle School in Carpentersville, is a member of the Boys and Girls Club of Dundee Township team. She will travel to Springfield today to participate this weekend in the state finals of the Lincoln Scholastic Bowl.

Sponsored by the Illinois Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the competition is a lead-up to the 16th president's 200th birthday in February 2009.

Karri and teammates Brya Dantzler, Jazzlyn Smith and Brianna Howard -- also sixth-graders at Lakewood --will tour the Capitol and eat breakfast at the governor's mansion. The finals of the competition take place Saturday morning at the old Capitol building, said Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Mike Berger.

Tim Rogers, director at the Lakewood school unit, and the club's Youth of the Year, Sonalia Ramirez, will accompany the team.

Qualifying for the state finals was no easy feat as the girls beat teams from Lake County and Chicago, needing a tiebreaker to win the semifinal round.

"The team did not miss a question in the first two rounds," Berger said.

The Dundee team defeated Lake County 280 to 200, before moving on to defeat the Little Village Boys and Girls Club in a sudden death tiebreaker.

Karri said the team studied for about an hour once a week and did practice tests during the month leading up to the contests. She said the team also spent countless hours memorizing Lincoln-related facts.

"His wife thought he was a clumsy dancer and would laugh at him," said Karri, recalling the most interesting tidbit she learned.