Mid-Ohio Educational Service Center in Mansfield recently hosted 32 teams of students from 15 different school districts across the region for the first Academic Challenge (AC) competition.
Leanna Ferreira, coordinator of AC, said this event provides students who excel in the classroom with an opportunity to showcase their strengths and passions while being celebrated for these talents. AC brings learners together as they work towards a common goal of gaining as many points as possible based on the information and trivia they know.
Students compete as a group of four, though teams are often comprised of up to six students as they are allowed to make substitutions through various parts of the tournament.
The tournament starts with teams getting a team question based in one of the categories: American Literature, Math, World History, Fine Arts, Life Science, World Literature, American Government, Physical Science, World Geography and American History. It is then followed by a toss-up where the first student to buzz in gets the opportunity to answer for a point for their team. The toss-up question for each team is repeated for all categories.
Next, teams work together to answer 20 questions with answers that all start with the same letter of the alphabet with only 4 minutes to answer as many as they can; this section concludes with 20 random toss-up questions on random categories.
When it was all completed, Lexington High School emerged the victor in the varsity tournament against Ashland High School by a score of 77 to 59. In the junior varsity tournament, Lexington again won while Ashland was the runner-up with a score of 64 to 46.
Ferreira said Academic Challenge is her favorite student event to organize. “First, it is so rewarding to see the students having so much pride and excitement in academic knowledge. A close second is watching them being celebrated for enjoying learning and making connections. And an even closer third is observing the lessons that are learned by these students as they are confronted with being wrong, taking risks and working with a team towards a common goal.”
