The Academic Team has reached for the stars this season by achieving many great things.

On Feb 16., the Academic Team won first place at the regional meet and are continuing to State on March 16th-18th at the Galt House.

“This year, they have achieved a lot of accomplishments, it’s been an outstanding year,” head coach Lisa Oliver said.

The Junior Varsity (9th and 10th-grade students) won the JV challenge. The Quick Recall team won the local HCEC-TV Academic Challenge for the second time, in addition to winning District, and Region tournaments for the first time.

As for the written test, there are five students qualified to take a test at the state level, and some will compete in two other areas. Senior team captain Garrett Ashlock and freshman Grant Avis scored in the top ten of social studies for their written examinations.

This is the first year the Future Problem Solving team, (which is made up of underclassmen girls) competed and won the District tournament.

Now, the Academic team is celebrating their advancement to the state level.

According to Ashlock, the win is amazing and is glad the team broke out of their second place streak.

“It feels really good!” he said. “My sophomore year we placed second to John Hardin, and my junior year we placed second to Elizabethtown, so it’s nice to break through and win finally. I think this year’s team is one of the best that Central has ever had, and I’m glad that fact was proven at Region.”

“It was such a good feeling because we talked about it at the first group meeting this year and we made that our goal,“ Oliver said. “It was kind of emotional for me because I was so proud of them because I knew how hard they worked for it.”

Oliver said she coaches Academic Team because of the kids and their exuberant personalities.

“They work so hard that it is a wonderful experience. We have all different types of students; we have students involved in sports, band, drama, and so these are outgoing students, and it’s just a really rewarding experience to work with them.”

Assistant coach Chuck Pearsall says that even though they are losing a couple of senior members, he is hoping the team will continue with their winning streak next year.

“We are only losing a couple of students, and we are hoping next to continue forward with this momentum,” he said. “I have a whole bunch of students that are excited about doing as well. Hopefully, their excitement will attract some other students into this, and we will have a building process, and keep moving forward.”

Even though the competitions are challenging, the members always reach out for extra practice to get better. Pearsall said that he is glad the students come to him for extra practice.

“They have been the ones coming to me and saying, ‘I want to do all this extra stuff to get better, what do I need to do?’ It’s nice not having to chase down kids and putting stuff in their hands, and saying, ‘Work on this!’ They’ve come to me and have taken it all from me.”

Ashlock believes that even though he will be graduating this year, the team will do fantastic.

“I’m a little melancholic, considering that I’ve done academic team since 4th grade and, as I said earlier, this is probably the best team I’ve ever been on, but I’m not worried about the future. This team is also really young as well as really good, and the people on the team this year (Keegan, Grant, Sam, Meghan, Andy, etc.) will be great next year in their own right,” he said.

Photo courtesy of Lisa Oliver. 

Did You Know?

Here are the categories of competition at an Academic Team Meet

• Quick recall, as head coach Lisa Oliver said, is like “playing jeopardy with a group.” There are teams of four, who listen to a moderator and are given a toss-up question. The first one hit the buzzer gets to answer. If they get the question right, the team is given a bonus question. If they answer incorrectly, the other team receives the question. Whoever has the most points wins the match.
• Written Assessment Examinations are an individual test with 50 questions, and you can choose to take either math, science, social studies, language arts, or arts and humanities. All students compete against others for 1st- 5th place. Math receives only one hour, while the rest have fifty minutes to complete each test.
• The Composition is a competition where students receive prompts and students are required to write a well-informed essay. Students have an hour to complete their essay.
• Future Problem Solving is an event where a team of four students is given a scenario in the future, and they have to come up with solutions by writing a paper on how to solve it. The problem can be anything such as environment, drones, and medicine. Pearsall said students use a “critical thinking process” and “find challenges to solve a problem.”