In the Indiana Academic Super Bowl, teams of students enhance their research and study skills by delving into a topic, taking them beyond what is usually covered in the classroom.
Subject area rounds include English, math, science, social studies, fine arts and interdisciplinary. The latter round brings the five subjects together.
This year’s theme for the Indiana Association of School Principals program is “Canada: Our Neighbor to the North.”
The day after the area competition April 21 at Austin High School, two Jackson County schools found out each will be sending one team to the state competition set for Saturday at Purdue University in West Lafayette.
Crothersville High School’s English team and Trinity Lutheran High School’s science team will be competing, both in Class 4.
This marks Crothersville’s second time having a team at state. The last time was 2002 when a fine arts team qualified.
Trinity has been involved with Academic Super Bowl for five years and won state titles with interdisciplinary in 2016, 2018 and 2019 and English in 2017.
At the recent area competition, Crothersville’s English squad answered 21 out of 25 questions correctly but the next day learned its score bumped up to 22 after a discrepancy was found on the 16th question.
In Class 4, Indiana Academy for Science, Math and Humanities scored the highest at 23, followed by North Decatur, Crothersville, Indianapolis Lutheran and Cowan all with 22. Wood Memorial was the final state qualifier with a score of 21.
For English, the novel is “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel, nonfiction is “Never Cry Wolf” by Farley Mowat, short stories are “Borders” by Thomas King, “Aunt Philippa and the Men” by Lucy Maud Montgomery and “Enigma” by David Huebert and poems are “Siren Song,” “The Moment,” “The Animals in that Country” and “Bored” by Margaret Atwood and literary allusion to mythological sirens.
Since Crothersville students stay busy with a variety of activities, coach Linda Myers said the English team decided to split up its reading. Junior Cole Reed read “Never Cry Wolf” and part of “Life of Pi,” seniors Kaylyn Holman and Kiarra Lakins read “Life of Pi” and part of “Never Cry Wolf” and the poems and sophomores Elayna Ord and Destiny Lawrence read the poems.
At area, Lakins and Reed stayed at the table for all 25 questions, while Ord was there for the first 12, and Holman subbed in for her for the final 13.
The team answered the first seven correctly, missed one, got five in a row right, missed three and then answered the final nine right. One of the three they missed later was counted right.
Reed said about half of the first 12 questions were about “Never Cry Wolf.”
“We got the first one right, and then we just got a lot in a row right, so I was like, ‘Wow! We have a pretty good shot at doing really well.’ It was just really exciting to get a whole bunch in a row right,” he said.
Ord said before some of the questions were read by the emcee, her teammates already were pointing at the answer.
“That’s when I was just like, ‘OK, we’re good. We’ve got it,’” she said. “I think we were all feeling a little nervous in our own ways, but once we got there and we worked like that, it was all good.”
Ord said it was exciting to watch the team finish strong.
“It was amazing to watch just because I was sitting in that position and I just knew how they were doing it. It was just really cool to watch,” she said.
Lawrence said she was happy to see the team winning.
“It was just fun to watch because I’ve not done anything like this before, so seeing it for the first time, it was just an awesome experience,” she said.
Reed and Lakins were glad to see the team come together.
“I’ve been doing the academic team since I got in middle school, so it was really exciting to see it really go somewhere,” Reed said.
“We were getting really excited. It was cool,” Lakins said of the strong finish. “I’m glad that we all studied.”
Since the area competition, the team has been rereading everything to be as prepared as possible for state.
Holman has been to state in track and field and cross-country, so she’s excited about making it to the top in the Academic Super Bowl.
Ord said she expects the questions to be harder, but she wants to enjoy the experience.
“This is our (her and Lawrence) first year of doing it, and we really enjoy it. It’s really cool that we get to do this,” Ord said.
Reed is ready for state, too.
“I’m really excited and eager to see what it’s all about,” he said.
Trinity’s science team consists of seniors Simeon Bauman and Hannah Kerkhof, sophomore Benjamin Neawedde and freshman Bradley Dyer.
At the area competition, they scored 20. That wound up being just enough for state, as Lafayette Central Catholic had the highest score at 22, Indianapolis Lutheran had 21 and Trinity was joined by Washington Township, Indiana Academy for Science, Math and Humanities and Orleans in scoring 20.
Trinity answered 11 of the first 12 questions right.
Dyer said he mainly studied biomes, geography and glaciers, Neawedde said he studied chemistry and Bauman’s focus was physics.
“There was one question that was about the difference between icebergs and sea ice. We were the only ones that got it right out of all of the people that were there,” Dyer said. “I was the one that knew the answer.”
The strong start gave them confidence going into the final 13 questions.
“I did not think that we were going to do that well, but it clicked something there,” Neawedde said.
Since the two seniors have other activities Saturday, Neawedde and Dyer will be the only two competitors at state.
“I’m trying now to learn physics. That’s what Simeon did. I’m trying to get that covered. I’m working on getting the formulas, just making sure I can do all of those,” Neawedde said.
“I’m going to start learning more about the areas I was studying — biomes and glaciers — but I’ll also look into some of the equations,” Dyer said. “The more I know, the more it will help.”
Trinity science teachers Sarah Akey and Jaime Brown coach the team.
“We only meet once a week during lunch, which is really not that much time, so the time that they spend on this, a lot of it happens outside of here, and that’s all self-motivated, and I think it was just a testament to how hard they’ve worked in and out of the classroom,” Akey said.
“When you come to the competition, you never quite know ‘Are the questions going to line up with how much they know?’ and the fact that it did, we were just like, ‘This is awesome,’” she said. “They get to show the world that they’ve worked really hard at this.”
Brown is excited to see how the two boys fare at state.
“Just to see them get the additional experience and know that they have more years ahead that they can do even better in the future, I think, is really cool,” she said. “I think they’ll do great.”