Trinity Lutheran High School was challenged on May 4 at Purdue University in West Lafayette in the Indiana Academic Super Bowl.

Four teams went head-to-head against other schools in English, science, fine arts and interdisciplinary. Out of these teams, Jayme Lowe’s English team won a state championship, answering 22 out of a possible 25 questions correctly.

This was Lowe’s first English team to advance to the state. The topics the students had been studying for the super bowl include “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, the 1989 movie “Dead Poets Society” and a set of poems by various authors. These pieces were focused on the end of the millennium, coming from the 1980s and 1990s.

The English team was surprised to hear they had won, Lowe said.

While in the audience, Lowe was doing the math to try and figure out who had won before the results were in.

Team captain and sophomore Jonathan Neawedde took a moment to truly process what had just happened once the results were in.

To himself, he just thought, “Wait a minute.”

“I was just really happy,” said sophomore Kate Fowler. “I didn’t really expect it.”

For Neawedde, he had competed before in similar competitions, but had never gone to state. He was also involved in the fine arts competition that same day.

At the state level, Neawedde said questions were a lot harder, especially for the other disciplines. The questions they were asked were deeper, focusing on themes and characters.

Something he expected to be asked that never came up was chapter names in the books he studied.

“I would say we were prepared, but English is just really hard to do well in because everyone is so good at it, especially at the state level,” said Neawedde.

This was Fowler’s first competition, which she has Lowe to thank for. Without Lowe encouraging her to join, she would not have been on the team.

“She’s always got a book with her,” said Lowe. “I know Kate well enough and I thought she would work well with these guys. Keep them a little grounded.”

To prepare for the super bowl, the students worked relentlessly to earn their first-place status. Weekly, the English team met up to study and review the material. In their free time, they would also study on their own.

Out of the material they learned about, Fowler’s favorite was the poetry while Neawedde enjoyed “Dead Poets Society.” He said poetry was not his thing, which is why choosing different teammates to focus on specific topics helped catapult their success.

“We kinda divided and conquered,” said Fowler.

During the competition, a particular moment of stress for everyone at the event right before their break was when the PowerPoint displaying questions had an issue and instead of displaying the answer to a question, jumped ahead and gave a new question. The question that appeared was scrapped, thankfully acting as an alternative question that they didn’t need.

“As a person in the audience, I was stressed out for them,” Lowe said.

A lesson for the students during this process, from start to finish, was trust and teamwork.

“You gotta trust the other people,” Neawedde said, because everyone possesses different knowledge and without the trust of everyone, what they did would not be possible. The team was able to leverage their different skill sets to come out on top.

When asked about what they would do if given this opportunity again, both Neawedde and Fowler were quick to respond positively.

“Definitely going to do it next year,” Neawedde said.

The team that actively competed consists of sophomores Fowler and Neawedde and freshman Sam Dyer. Due to their ages, Lowe said they “have potential to maybe repeat some success in the next couple years.”

The other team members on the roster — Neaweede’s brother and senior Benjamin Neawedde, senior Connor Nichols and senior Allison Ward — were on the team, but did not compete in this specific competition. Due to how well the three participating were doing, they agreed to not swap anyone out when they could have. The group did compete at the area competition at Austin High School, which qualified them for the super bowl, and scored third place.

“For me as a coach, […] it was really great to have six people who really knew all of the material really well,” said Lowe.

All of the teams that placed at the Indiana Academic Super Bowl brought home medals to keep and plaques to display at Trinity Lutheran High School. For winning state championship, the English team also received a banner that they are going to hang in the school.

Along with these awards to show their accomplishments, Lowe plans on making t-shirts for her champions. As a fun play on words based on the English team’s topics, she is going to make them “The Dead Poets on Mango Street” themed.