Ben Bowman wins gold at International Geography Championship

Rising Sussex Academy sixth-grader Ben Bowman has returned from Europe with a gold medal after taking first place in his division at the International Geography Championship.

The biennial contest for students ages 8 through 18 is held by International Academic Competition, a company founded by former “Jeopardy” champion David Madden. Ben qualified for the event by placing first in the competition’s regional final in Philadelphia. 

More than 300 students from 19 different countries attended this year’s event in Vienna, Austria, and competed in four separate age divisions – elementary, intermediate, middle school and high school. Ben won first place in the fifth-grade division, and was a finalist in two other events.

The contest kicked off with a two-day exam used to seed students in future contests and to award prizes, and Ben also participated in buzzer-based games. As the only Delawarean in his age group, Ben was matched with students from Maine and Connecticut for group competitions.

During the opening ceremony, Ben said he saw an older student wearing a Rehoboth Beach T-shirt and later found out the boy attended Archmere Academy in Claymont.

Some questions were really obscure and a lot tougher than the regional contest, Ben said. For instance, one question asked participants to name the top eight largest Japanese islands, Ben said, so it was hard to study for the competitions.

“He reads atlases in his spare time,” his mother Nicole Bowman said.

In between events, the family took educational field trips in the Vienna area, including the United Nations, Mozart’s home, The Globe Museum, art museums and a pastry tour. After the competition, they went on a trip to Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany with International Academic Competition.

It was Ben’s first time traveling to Europe.

“Austria was my favorite country because it’s pretty,” he said. “Other places were more crowded. And there were a lot of mountains there too.”

Ben said he’d be interested in forming a team with his future classmates.

“Now that I know what it is, I know what to study more, and I’ll be the oldest in my age division, so it will be an advantage,” he said.

In his spare time, Ben plays a lot of sports, including pickleball, tennis, baseball, flag football and wrestling, and he also enjoys going to the beach.