MUKILTEO — The five friends walked 10 miles to their high school graduation more than two years ago, a metaphor for the journey ahead and one more unifying act for a Knowledge Bowl academic team known for its wackiness as well as its brains.
They called themselves the “Robster Craws,” a phrase for lobster claws taken from the 1984 teen hit movie “Revenge of the Nerds.”
It’s not that they considered themselves nerds, even though they were perfectly content to hang out together at home playing ping-pong and Risk and other board games on Friday nights.
On that memorable walk to graduation, “we began reflecting on team camaraderie and the individuals we had become, deciding that what we built was worth continuing,” said Sam Wrzeszcz, now a junior at Duke University in North Carolina.
They wanted two things: to keep building on their friendship no matter how far apart they were and to help their community.
They came up with the idea to give a scholarship that would be awarded each spring to a Kamiak High School senior involved in the relatively obscure pursuit of Knowledge Bowl. The idea is their scholarship will grow over time as they become more established.
Last Thursday, they played host to a spaghetti dinner at Shawn O’Donnell’s American Grill and Irish Pub in south Everett, raising $750 toward more scholarships. On hand were former classmates, teachers from as far back as their middle school years, and family.
“It’s still shocking to me the support we have,” said Steven Huang, 20, a junior at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. “The community showed us so much support. All sorts of ideas were going through my head about what we could do next.”
“There are definitely big aspirations,” said Jeff Jones, 21, a junior at Boston University studying advertising and international relations.
Each Kamiak grad is headed into a different field.
Wrzeszcz (pronounced Resh), 21, is on an ROTC scholarship at Duke and on schedule to become a commissioned officer in 2009. He wants to become a Navy pilot.
Huang, 20, who is majoring in business administration and applied statistics, is considering becoming an actuary. During the upcoming semester, he’ll do consulting work for Vision Capital, a private equity firm based in London, and Earthwatch Institute, a global nonprofit organization.
His work for Vision Capital will take him to Barbados for a week later this month to advise the company’s hotel chain.
Keisuke Natsume, 20, is majoring in economics at the University of Washington, and James Chin, 20, is studying international business and Italian at the UW with plans to go to law school.
Last Thursday, each wore a lobster-red suit that Wrzeszcz ordered in his limited Chinese in Shanghai while he studying abroad at Fudan University.
As Wrzeszcz tells it, the tailor politely questioned his taste in clothing.
“The tailor couldn’t believe it,” he said, telling Wrzeszcz, “Why would (you) want red suits, they are not very … nice, many people don’t wear them. I think it will look very … umm … different.”
Being different is largely who they are.
“We quickly gained a reputation for being the most eccentric Knowledge Bowl team in the area, not an easy feat in a sport that relies solely on an ability to answer trivia,” Wrzeszcz said.
“We were more ridiculous than your average Knowledge Bowlers,” Jones agreed.
After their freshmen year of college, each pulled money from their own pockets to start their first scholarship fund, giving the cash to Kamiak senior Joel Baxter, who “best embodied the quirky, untiring spirit of the Robster Craws,” Wrzeszcz said.
On the awards night, in the middle of the Kamiak Commons, the five friends opened a brief case with 250 $1 bills.
For all their frivolity, they have a serious side.
Each remembers one of the first pieces of literature they read in a freshmen honors English class in high school. It was English poet Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” which included the line, “To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”
“As we moved through Kamiak and beyond we all came to realize that the line was an instruction,” Wrzeszcz said. “The pursuit of knowledge as an end is a worthy life-long quest.”
So, they decided, is helping others pursue knowledge.
Barbara Huang, Steven’s Huang’s mother, looked on with delight as people arrived for the scholarship fundraiser.
“The nice part for me is they didn’t forget their school,” she said. “They remembered where they came from. They remembered their roots.”
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or e-mail stevick@heraldnet.com.
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