Fourteen area teams competed in the event, which was held at UNC. Triangle Area Homeschool finished second, Raleigh Charter High School was third, and Chapel Hill High School finished fourth.

The scores in the finals and semifinals were close: ECHHS edged Triangle Area Homeschool in the championship round by two points, 150 to 148. In the semifinals, Triangle Area Homeschool beat CHHS, 122 to 117, and ECHHS beat Raleigh Charter 144 to 141.

In an Ethics Bowl competition, teams of up to five students face off on a series of challenging and complex moral issues. Presented with cases drawn from real events, participants defend positions they believe to be most reasonable, and are judged on the strength, perceptiveness, and logical force of the arguments offered.

You won't find Ethics on the standardized tests students take, but there are few subjects more worthy of attention and study.

Roses, while we're at it, to Smith Middle School, which came in first among 28 teams to win the MathCounts Chapter Competition Feb. 11 at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh.

The victory puts Smith into the state finals March 16 at the N.C. School of Science and Math in Durham.

Smith has been among the top 10 teams in the state for six of the past seven years, but this was the first time the team won its chapter competition.

Seven of the top 16 individuals students were from Smith. Tops among them was sixth-grader Stas Kuzmenko, with a score of 45 (a perfect score is 46) that earned him second place among all individuals. Veronica Kim and Matthew Dai each scored 43, Jennifer Zou and Andrew Zhang had 42, and Sarah Wu and Vijay Dey scored 41. Vijay was champion of the Countdown Road.

Boyd Blackburn coaches the team, with help from Jaclyn Arnson.

Roses, finally, to the boys basketball team at Chapel Hill High School.

CHHS had a magical run, going undefeated during the regular season and winning No. 1 ranking along the way. That's the first time CHHS has done that since 1957.

The Tigers' string of victories came to an end in the Carolina-6 Conference tournament, when Oxford Webb upset CHHS. The Tigers bounced back with a big win against Southern Guilford in the first round of the state tournament, and then ran into Oxford Webb again. The Warriors stunned the Tigers again, ending their season at 26-2.

Despite that disappointment, Coach Tod Morgan and his squad should hold their heads high.

We haven't forgotten the Chapel Hill girls. They, too, earned the top seed in the playoffs, and were set to play a third-round game Tuesday. We suspect we'll have more to say about them soon.