Two student teams from Collin College’s Respiratory Care program will compete for national honors in the Sputum Bowl after taking first and second place in the state-level medical knowledge competition.
Collin’s teams beat out 11 others from around the state during the Texas Society for Respiratory Care Convention in Waco in July. The Sputum Bowl is a quiz show-format respiratory care knowledge competition where two teams square off and try to get the correct answers off the fastest.
Questions include the areas of anatomy and physiology, diagnostics, pathology, mechanical ventilation, neonatal/pediatric care, airway management, pharmacology and more.
Collin’s teams faced off against each other in the finals, and the team of Patrick Forsythe, Kebron Isayas and Cesar Romero won by one point over the team of Alexis Matthews, Cassie Morris and Cindy Zhang. The first-place finishing team went undefeated throughout the tournament. The second-place team lost an early game but battled back through the alternate bracket to make an appearance in the finals.
This is the sixth year in a row that Collin College has taken first place in state competition. The teams will compete in nationals, Oct. 4-7 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The first place team gets an automatic berth, and the second place team is going to nationals as a “renegade.”
Collin has finished in third place twice at national Sputum Bowl competition, losing by just a point in last year’s national finals.
“We are trying to get over that last hurdle to make it to (national) finals,” said Julie Boganwright, a respiratory care educator and co-coach. “It is steep competition at the national level.”
Boganwright, who coaches the team along with Angie Switzer, said that the teams did very well considering the pressure the students are under to keep up a winning tradition.
“They exceeded my expectations this year,” she said. “It is a bigger burden on them each year that we keep winning because everyone is gunning for them. We are really proud of them.”