The Visor

Academic challenge wins their league

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March 11, 2010

Lindsay Huth

While athletes tone their bodies for competitions, the academic challenge team trains their minds to test their knowledge against the most intelligent students from around Ohio.

Coming off of a successful season as the $10,000 champions of the WEWS Channel 5 face-off, the team has made an impressive run so far this year as well.

“The win last year inspired us,” senior Janelle Stalter said. “We still have a strong team despite players we lost.”

The fall season consisted of competitions on Oct. 12 and Nov. 2. With four matches at each contest, they finished with a record of 7-1 to become the season runners-up. For the winter season’s competitions on Nov. 16 and Dec. 7, the team was 5-3.

This year the team also managed a perfect alphabet round, which consists of 20 questions whose answers all begin with the same letter.

“I’ve been coaching for six years and a perfect round has only happened once in practice,” co-advisor Cheryl Erdman said. “It is very rare and they were very excited.”

At the Summit County tournament at Kent State University on Feb. 2, the team dominated the competition by winning all of its seven matches, beating out Revere and Manchester in the last round to win the League II Championship.

Vincent Burns and Stalter received honorable mentions as Summit County All-Stars, and Burns was Hoban’s “Top Gun” in the final round during which one competitor from each of the 24 schools must answer as many questions as possible before missing three.

Now, the team will advance to regionals in April when it will test its skills against the champions of the other leagues and possibly continue to the state competition.

“We will have to face the tough Copley and Hudson teams, but Hoban has defeated them in the past,” Burns said. “We are confident in a top five finish, but we definitely need to practice.”

The team holds three, hour-long practices a week and each member is required to attend two. Team members are now preparing extensively for more formidable competitors.

“We are doing everything we can to prepare with study sessions and buzzer competitions,” co-advisor Judy Mohan said.

The team is doing all it can to follow up last year’s victories.

“The season starts in August and went until May last year,” Erdman said. “We will have to wait and see how far we go this year.”

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