12/17/21 

HAYS, Kan. – Four second-year students in Fort Hays State University’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) brought home first-place honors from a state competition earlier this fall. And the winning team gained more than a traveling trophy and a plaque.

For claiming top honors in the Prairie Bowl Praxis Cup in Wichita, FHSU’s winning team members also each earned the right to have their fee waived for the national certification examination. That fee is $146 per student.

The biggest prize, the students say, was getting the opportunity to hear the types of questions that will be on the exam. Students were asked questions in a quiz bowl format, where they earned points for answering correctly – and quicker than their opponent.

“We will be taking this exam before our graduation in May, so it was a great experience to see what the questions will be like,” said FHSU’s Halle Knigge, a student from Fairbury, Neb. “The best part of the competition was all the students and faculty who were there cheering us on.”

Joining Knigge on FHSU’s first-place team, and their hometowns, were Madison Shandy, McPherson; Cody Stephenson, Sedgwick; and Morgan Weber, Hays. Gabrielle Wilson from Colby served as an alternate and will also have her national exam fee waived.

The Prairie Bowl Praxis Cup is an annual competition among students from the four state universities that offer CSD programs – FHSU, Wichita State, Kansas State, and Kansas. The competition was held in conjunction with the annual conference of the Kansas Speech-Language Hearing Association in Wichita. Fort Hays State scored 21.28 points to beat out runner-up Wichita State by 1.93 points.