The Academic Team has made it to the regional competition taking place on April 18. Under the supervision of their two advisors, guidance counselor Cody Masters and government teacher J.R. Wait, and the leadership of their team captain senior Owen White, they have had an impressive season winning all 14 of their matches.
The team has broken records this year scoring over 4oo points on 8 different occasions when they had only broken 400 twice in the past 5 years.
According to White, this is because of one of their sayings, “We don’t take part, we take over.”
The team is really excited to be participating in regionals and are thrilled for the opportunity that might come from it.
“The most exciting part of regionals is the opportunity to make it to states,” Masters said.
The team does not really spend lots of time studying together despite how it might seem.
“The students prepare on their own,” Masters said. “In an effort to not add to our student’s already busy schedules, most of the work is done in recruiting; I pursue only the most academically inclined students. This way, we do not need to really practice.”
This strategy has been extremely successful for the team and has led them to their best season yet.
“Our motto is show up and ball out,” Masters said.
When the team does study, they look back at previous used questions to see what they might be expected to answer.
“They have all of the past question sets online, so I end up just memorizing a lot of them or using word recognition,” White said.
Another member of the team, junior Harrison McKinney, uses similar strategies to study as well.
“I do a lot of practice tests, and a lot of quiz websites like QB Reader and Jetpunk,” McKinney said.
There have been a lot of great moments for the team throughout the year but McKinney’s favorite has to be their first match of the season.
“I was really nervous and didn’t know what to expect, but then we nearly beat the school record, so that was really exciting,” McKinney said.
The teams biggest problem for next year is the fact that they will only have 2 returning members.
“We could use some new members, and it’s really fun if you enjoy trivia,” McKinney said.
To join the team, students have to take a practice test created by White to place where they are and how they would fit into the team.
“I make a test every year to assess the individual skill levels of each member, and there’s a correct percentage of questions in each category, like literature, science and geography,” White said.
With a perfect 14-0 record behind them and a ‘show up and ball out’ mentality, the team is planning on dominating the competition. On April 18, they’ll find out if their trivia knowledge is enough to take their record breaking season and transform it into a state-championship run.
