Indian American students fared admirably at the inaugural International Geography Bee World Championships, with at least five placing in individual competitions.

The individual competitions, broken up into Varsity, Junior Varsity and Middle School categories, determined winners based on the placement in the international geography exam, international geography showdown and the international geography quiz.

The middle school grouping at the competition, held July 11 through July 17 in Berlin, Germany, featured a clean sweep of Indian Americans. The champion was Saket Pochiraju of Ohio. Second place went to Texas-based Srikrishna Darbha. And third place went to Ved Muthusamy, of Michigan.

Avi Goel of California was the gold medal winner in the junior varsity group, beating out fellow Californian Wesley Zhang, who came in second; and Arjun Nathan of Washington and John Phipps of Argentina, who tied for third.

In the varsity group, Seth Buikema of Illinois topped the competitors, beating out Canada’s Malhaar Moharir and Dylan Tynes of Louisiana, who finished second and third, respectively.

The overall winner was California, which won eight gold medals, four silver, four bronze and 16 total medals. Ohio, North Carolina, Canada and Pennsylvania rounded out the top five finishers.

The event, which featured 117 spellers from numerous countries, included several events, both team and individual events. Team events included Geographeud, Team Quiz and Treasure Hunt.

The individual events included buzzer-based games on Historical Geography Bee – Goel and Pochiraju both won their respective age group events there; International Geography Quiz – which Goel and Pochiraju both won, also, with Nathan and Darbha winning second in their age groups and Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan of California taking third in the middle school group; the International Geography Showdown – with Goel and Pochiraju winning and Rohil Bhinge and Nathan taking second and third in junior varsity, and Dharba and Muthasamy taking silver and bronze in middle school; and Scramble on Caribbean Geography Bee – which Sravya Kuchibhotla of North Carolina took third in varsity, Goel and Bhinge took second and third in JV, and Sumanyu Dixit of North Carolina, Anoushka Buddhikot of New Jersey and Samik Bhinge of Virginia taking the top three spots in the middle school level.

There were also a number of other individual events, including the Geography Knockout Tournament, International Geography Exam and Simulation of the Berlin Conference.

"After these awards, I want to move on to progress in other subject areas such as math and computer science as these are my desired areas to study in college. The lion's share of my rationale for winning such things stems back to personal pride and desire although I hope to use them, to some extent, to hopefully embellish my college applications if possible," Goel said in a Press Trust of India report.

The International Geography Exam, the International Geography Showdown and the International Geography Quiz together constituted the official 2018 IGB World Championship title.

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