Academic Super Bowl Team; Powering through the hardships

BHS has an Academic Super Bowl team, competing in subjects in English, Math, Science, History, Fine Arts and  Interdisciplinary, which is all subjects combined, and is the last subject to compete. Ms. Paul is the Fine Arts coach, Ms. Cannon is the English coach, Mr. Metz is the History coach and Ms. Jones is the Science coach. Unfortunately, there isn’t a math coach.

I am a part of the English, Math and Interdisciplinary team. As a part of the math team, it was difficult to study the materials since we didn’t have a coach. As a tenth grader, there were many things that I have never learned so it was especially hard to learn new things and understand them in such a short time crunch. But to be honest, I would totally do it again. It brought me many challenges that I was able to overcome and overall helps me in school in the long run. The Qualifiers were last Tuesday, April 19. For the Interdisciplinary round, we placed second, and the team is very hopeful to qualify for state which will be on Saturday May 7.

This year’s topic is “Canada: Our Neighbor to the North.” For the English team, we read many stories by Canadian authors with two novels, short stories and poems. Life Of Pi by Yann Martel, was where most of the questions were asked. It was about 35 percent of the English questions. The book was about a young boy who has been adrift at sea and shows how he manages to survive with different animals on the boat. Martel said the message of this book is to make you believe in God. The story was fairly interesting though. The second book is Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat, and unlike Life of Pi, this one is a non-fiction story. Never Cry Wolf was about Mowat’s experiences with wolves. My favorite short story that I read for the competition would be “Aunt Phillipa and the Men” by Laud Montgomery. The story takes place in a first-person point-of-view with a girl named Ursula after she’s been sent to live away with her aunt who had a unique sense of style. 

The other teams did very well as well, and we are all very proud of everyone on the teams who has competed! Fine Arts came in third. They studied materials from different Canadian Artists and understood the techniques that have been used.

History did very well even though there were only two people competing in that subject. Though they didn’t place, it was great to see them compete. They did so well, and hopefully next year we would be able to have many more people compete.

The science team also did an amazing job. It was such a beautiful way to see everyone come together collectively with answers, and have a small bond over it.

 English had our first meet on Thursday, January 26 and have been meeting every Thursday since. Our first competition was March 3, and it was played here at BHS. Although it was very nerve-wracking to watch the other teams come in, it was a great way to start the season up. Even though we didn’t have high hopes for it, we were blown away with how well it ended up going.  

I joined Academic Super Bowl because it seemed like a fun way to study materials and compete. It was great to see other people share similar interests as me and overall have a great time and build each other up as a team. The season was filled with laughs, and since everyone has such an amazing and friendly personality, everything became so much easier to go through.

A special thanks to our coaches since it has been a rollercoaster of a ride, but they have continuously made sure everything was very comfortable and to our liking. Although there weren’t many people here this year, we are all very hopeful that next year people will come out and enjoy this experience by competing in a new and fun way.