WHS Academic Team Wins First Match of Season By Dominating Final Round

by Jessica Bentley

Academic Team had their first match this past Friday, January 6th, and won. This is after they had a really close match on the TV show “It’s Academic.”

Coach John Van Bloem had thoughts on the match, “All three matches were very close until the last round and there are five rounds. We crushed them in the last round, which means we have a strong finishing team, and that’s cool. It seems a few other schools like Brunswick, Urbana, and Frederick High have some strong finishing teams.”

“I was so proud of the team. I had never been to a match, and it was very exciting and nerve wracking. To sum it up it is Trivial Pursuit on amphetamines,” said media specialist Cindy Doggett

Although the team won the match by a lot, they lost the play in match which means they do not play this week. Looking ahead Van Bloem is looking for certain things in the team, “It was only the first match, so we will have to wait and see how the rest of the season goes. In the beginning we try to develop a lot of the younger players, so we are still trying to do that. In the match I think we played 14 players and we will play a good bit of players until it gets closer to playoffs then we will put in stronger players. I think most will agree that Caleb Chen is our strongest player, but Susanna Chen had a great night Friday.”

Senior Alec Parker played Friday and said “I think we did really well in each individual round, especially round two because that’s when you don’t have to buzz in and we got five out of six questions. The math round we were really strong in also; we didn’t buzz in on the really hard questions letting the other teams get them wrong and lose points. In the regular match we got 20 points and I think we did really well since that is the first time I’ve been there. For the play in round I think we could have strategized more and if we had we probably would have won and been playing this Friday. Susanna won MVP, but my MVP would have to be Caleb [Chen].”

“Even though we do not play this week we are excited to see how the rest of the teams do. Middletown doesn’t look that good at all. We will have to see if they do better as the season goes on. Another team we are watching is Urbana. They were double champions last year which is rare, then they lost Friday night. We will be watching to see if they are just not good this year or what,” continued Van Bloem.

We will have to see how Academic Team does the rest of their season after this strong start.