ACADEMIC BOWL UPDATE

 

Academic Bowl Update

By Kate Sutphen and Tyler Harms

Last Saturday, February 3rd, the Sparta High School academic team led by McKaela Reekie took home second place. This tournament featured over 15 teams from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where teams competed against each other in academically themed trivia questions. The theme for this year was “television shows.” Only eight teams make it into the playoffs, which is a single-elimination model. This is Sparta’s first time making it to the playoffs, where they were seeded fifth out of eighteen after the preliminaries. 

The competition begins with three rounds against three different teams. Each round includes thirty questions with a “lightning round” in the middle. The rounds are modeled after Jeopardy - each question can be worth 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100, with five categories in each round that teams can select. They have thirty seconds to answer the question and if they do not answer correctly or run out of time the question goes to the other team. The other team then has ten seconds to “steal,” and if they either answer incorrectly or run out of time neither team is rewarded the points. During the lightning round, a series of ten questions are asked in 60 seconds. The team can pick from three topics of their choice. Each question that the team answers correctly gets ten points. The other team is then asked the questions they did not get to or did not get correct. For each question that is asked they get six seconds to answer. Then the last fifteen jeopardy-style questions are asked. At the end of the round, all the points are tallied. The total points from each of the rounds are combined to determine the eight teams moving on to the next round. 

During the playoffs, Sparta advanced twice with wins against Chatham and JFK High School. Both rounds, of which, were upsets. The first round was a rematch against Chatham, whom Sparta lost very narrowly to in the preliminary rounds. In the semi-finals, Sparta outlasted the number 3 seeded JFK team to secure a spot in the finals. The final match against Voorhees was well-fought, but Voorhees managed to win. Nonetheless, Sparta’s run was historic, marking their farthest advancement in such a tournament.