Blue Mountain students have an invitation to compete at the 2016 High School National Academic Quiz Tournament May 28 and 29 in Dallas, Texas, after placing third in the state.
Team members and seniors, Micah Boyer, Matthew Blair, Daniel Kelley and Alex Snitzer, and juniors, Travis Barrow and Andrew Chawluk, won the third place title at the Pennsylvania Academic Competition in Harrisburg on April 29, qualifying them for NAQT.
The team’s been successful for a number of reasons, according to Steve J. Zimmerman, high school social studies teacher and gifted coordinator who serves as team coach.
“We practice daily, we have a group of students with a wide variety of interests,” he said, noting some are versed in history, science, arts and literature. “We start all the way back in ninth grade looking for team members, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do well because of our past tradition of winning, and our school offers a good number of hard classes to push our kids intellectually,” Zimmerman said.
The team received a state trophy, a $500 check to be used for student scholarships and the NAQT invitation.
Blue Mountain students earned the chance to compete at the state level by claiming first place March 18 at the 24th annual Schuylkill County Academic Competition held at Penn State Schuylkill campus and sponsored by Schuylkill Intermediate Unit 29.
At the state level, all of the teams are the best from their respective intermediate units, and the questions teams are asked are a lot more challenging, Zimmerman explained.
“A traditional U.S. history question about Prohibition Era gangsters might ask about Al Capone, John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde — criminals many people are familiar with. At this level however, the question was about the nickname of bank robber George Nelson (“Baby Face”). Or instead of an art question about Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, we were given a question about a painting by El Greco. So the questions are looking to see which teams know content beyond the everyday.”
To reach their title match, the Blue Mountain team defeated Friends Select School and Canon-McMillan in their first match; and Dauphin County Technical School and Garnet Valley High School in their second match. Their total score of 175 placed them in the fourth position of the top nine teams, qualifying for semi-final play. They next defeated Honesdale and Spring Grove in the semifinals to place into the finals where they lost to the eventual state winner, Lehigh Valley Academy and second place team, West Chester Henderson.
Zimmerman offered special thanks to the Schuylkill IU for the “fantastic” Academic League they have organized for the Schuylkill County competitive teams.
“The competition level is great and many times these students would never have been able to participate in interscholastic activities without teams and leagues like this,” he said. “As an educator, I have immense respect for what these students can do. My only regret is that although some of the brightest students in Pennsylvania were on display in Harrisburg, they competed against each other in front of only a handful of spectators. Our society claims to need and respect education, yet more people might attend a dart match at a local fire station than watch our nation’s youth show off their academic talents.”