Academic Challenge is an after school club for students who are interested in trivia. Academic Challenge is a trivia game that asks about many different topics such as, sports, news, cinema, pop culture, history, literature, music, art, and geography.
Students join Academic Challenge to learn new things and use what they already know to answer questions. The students practice in many different ways for many different topics. The students that are interested in sports or news spend their time watching the news and sports games. Mrs. DeLuca gives the students resources to study, such as maps, lists of presidents, lists of famous music artists, and many other resources. Students begin practincing after school once a week in October and the season begins in January and lasts until the tournaments in March.
Mrs DeLuca has been the coach of Academic Challenge for six years. Mrs DeLuca was asked by the principal, Mr. Hynes, to be the coach when she first started teaching here in Lowellville. She agreed and has enjoyed the past six years coaching the team. Mrs DeLuca said, “ I have a really good group of kids that work well as a team while having fun and trying their best. It’s really fun watching them gain confidence the more they play. The younger players in particular are always excited when they answer questions correctly during the matches. This year’s group of students have been a lot of fun to coach. It’s exciting watching the older students mentor the younger students.”
Academic Challenge Captain Reeve Donatelli, Cheyenne Bott, Jordan Nock, and Zak Sargent have all been participating in Academic Challenge since the eighth grade. Reeve enjoys answering questions about math and politics. He stays updated with daily news in order to learn more about politics.
Junior, Zak Sargent is good at answering questions about sports, musicals, and movies. Tyler DeMain, also a junior, enjoys sports and pop culture questions. Jordan Nock loves geography and Cheyenne loves medical and mythology questions.
Katelynn Okular is a ninth grader who enjoys answering questions about mythology and movies. She learns more about mythology by reading books and watching movies about it. She said, “I am getting better each match.”
At the end of the season there is a Trash Tournament. The Trash Tournament is a multiple match tournament throughout the day on March 8th. This event is being held at Salem High School and focuses on pop culture, including music, television, video games and new movies.
The lead tournament is on March 1st at Columbiana High School. Every Academic Challenge team in Mahoning County is attending this tournament.
This year Mrs. DeLuca has more students on the team than ever before and she is excited to have so many students on the team who love to play. This year’s team includes, Reeve Donatelli, Cheyenne Bott, Zak Sargent, Jordon Nock, Tyler Demain, John Swanson, Levi Moore, Lily Sargent, Morgan Demain, Katelynn Okular, Liam Goodman, Kayleigh Cruz, Mya Harris-Bedoya, and Laila Coira.
The students are very excited for the upcoming tournaments and looking forward to coming back next year.
Good luck to the Academic Challenge team in these tournaments.
