The Academic Team is in the middle of its season, and has been improving greatly since when they started at the beginning of the year.
“Academic Team is very similar to the game show Jeopardy,” sponsor Lisa McCarthy said. “We go to contests with a team of four kids, and we compete against another team of four kids. Basically we all have a buzzer, and the first kid that can buzz in with the right answer [does so]. You only have five seconds to answer. They win points. It’s kind of like a trivia game.”
Questions asked to the teams are very broad and can vary from the core subjects in school to current events.
“There is a moderator that reads questions to us from any subject area: math, science, English, history, general knowledge,” McCarthy said.
The team competes around the district at all-day tournaments several times a year.
“Usually we go to tournaments on Saturdays,” McCarthy said. “When we go to a tournament, we might play three or four rounds in the morning against other schools, and in the afternoon they’ll usually do a championship bracket. We play all day long, just with different schools answering trivia questions. [We go to] around eight [tournaments per year], on average. That includes district tournaments.”
Some individuals on the team have won individual awards, but the team as a whole has yet to experience great success at tournaments.
“This year we’ve been hitting about average. At our first tournament in Salem, we had three kids make the All-Tournament Team: Katy Harman, Taliesin Chipman, and Collin Darnell. So we’ve gotten individual medals, but as far as team trophies, we have not got one yet this year,” McCarthy said.
However, McCarthy still believes the team has the potential to improve before the season comes to an end.
“Some years we’re very competitive and others we’re kind of in the middle of the pack. We’ve been getting stronger as the year’s been going on, so I have high hopes for the next couple of tournaments,” McCarthy said.
The team has put in hours of practice with lots more to come in order to prepare for their tournaments.
“We practice at least twice a week, and we go over question sets, just like they were in an actual game format. I read the questions, and they buzz in if they think they know the answer. We spend about an hour, twice a week, going over trivia questions,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy believes that the skills that the team has learned will have a positive impact on the way they learn and their experience in the classroom.
“The members of our team really encourage each other,” McCarthy said. “If you think you know the answer, you buzz in and give that answer. So it gives them more confidence, to be willing to try and maybe make a mistake in class. I think it helps them to be willing to help and assist the teacher if the teacher is asking questions in class. I don’t think my kids on the academic team are shy about giving input, because they’re used to giving input during our practices.”
It is thought that being on the team helps a lot to improve on skills necessary inside and outside of academia.
“It builds confidence, and teaches you to think quickly. Sometimes in life you need to come up with a quick response, an accurate response, and it brings all of that knowledge those kids have to the forefront. They learn how to access that information they’ve been learning in their classes, and learn how to access it quickly,” McCarthy said. “It also gives them an opportunity to try. Because you’re answering questions so quickly, you’re not always going to get them right, but you’re trying it.
