Academic Super Bowl Team Goes to State Finals
The team won the Indiana Crossroads Conference championship on March 6.
The team scored four first-place finishes in social studies, math, fine arts, and interdisciplinary. The team came in third in two other disciplines, science and English, losing on the tie-breakers in both cases.
The student team members are: Alex Marshall, James Hentz, Emily Adams, Katelyn Hartman, Michael Black, Isabelle Smith, Audrey Maue, Sia Chen, Zaiyang Xu, Jimiao Zhang, Sean Xe, Alex Orange-Miller, and Eric Xie.
The team’s coaches are the following teachers: Sarah Smith, science; Leila El-Murr, fine arts; Jeff Getty, social studies; Jesse Purvis, English; Elizabeth Williams, math.
“It was definitely an exciting evening,” said Mrs. Sarah Smith, the club moderator who also coaches the science team.
The team competed against Cardinal Ritter, Lutheran, Triton Central, Speedway and Beech Grove high schools.
Academic Super Bowl is an academic competition held every year by the Indiana Association of School Principals. Scecina competes for the conference title during one of the invitational sessions.
The 2019 Academic Super Bowl theme is “The Fertile Crescent,” which is, Mrs. Smith said, “basically ancient Mesopotamia.”
There are five subject areas – social studies, math, English, science, and fine arts- and a combined area, interdisciplinary round. The subject areas have content relative to the theme, most of which is not presented in regular curriculum at school.
Senior James Hentz has been competing in the Academic Super Bowl since his freshman year and last year went to the state competition with the science team, which finished in the top five, while the math team came in second.
“This year we’re hoping everyone can make it to state,” James said, “because we did pretty well by winning the ICC conference title.”
“We begin in early September recruiting team members and study weekly until competition starts in the spring,” said Mrs. Smith.
On April 16, Scecina’s team will head to Beech Grove High School for the qualifying round for the state, the Area competition. There are several host schools around the state and all participating schools are grouped by enrollment. Scecina is the 3rd division.
From the Area competition, the top seven schools from the state head to Purdue University to compete for the state titles in the different subjects.
