On Friday, April 27, 2012 the Bel Air High School Academic Team won the Harford County Academic Tournament championship for the second year in a row. The Academic Team has been coached by Mrs. Roppelt and Mrs. Bates for the past five years. This year’s team members include: Daniel Arble , Jason Bender (Team captain), Michael Boom (Team Captain), Ryan Brown, Quoc Bui , Eric Chau, Zach Krebs, Tucker Lurie, Derek Ni. “It’s not just for nerds,” says team captain Daniel Arble, “I’ve become more bold and self-confident [since joining academic club].”
The members of the Academic Team are chosen from who are in the Academic Club. Student can join the Academic Club at the beginning of the school year after attending a preliminary meeting in September. Practice is held once a week to prepare for the various competitions throughout the year. Team Captain Jason Bender says, “It is so much more fun than you would think, and you don’t need to be ‘smart’ to be on the team, everyone knows something, and that means everyone can contribute during competitions.” Competitions feature two types of questions: Toss-ups and Hurdles. Toss-up questions are buzzer questions that require an individual to answer without the help of his or her team. A Hurdle question is a question in which the teams may conference with each other before answering. Topics of these questions include: Math, Science, Social Studies and Art.
Reasons Team Captains believe other students should join academic club:
- It’s tons of fun
- You learn tons of useful information
- It looks fantastic of college resumes
- To improve at trivia
- To appear on television
- To showcase academic talents
- To challenge themselves mentally
“I believe that the academic club makes students want to learn new material in class,” says Coach Roppelt.
The Academic Club is finished with competitions for this school year. However, you can see them in an invitational event at Bel Air next November.