The Academic Challenge team won the championship trophy at the Chagrin Valley Conference Academic Challenge Tournament held at Geneva High School on Feb. 1.
For the past two years they have placed second in the competition, but this time they took home first place.
Captain Ezrin Saltzman and staff advisor Gabby Greer-Jones explained that Academic Challenge is a competitive quiz-based club where students answer questions on a wide variety of topics.
The team competes in two major formats: NAQT (National academic quiz tournaments) and OAC (Ohio academic competition). These cover subjects like American history, literature, geography, economics, math, science and government.
NAQT also includes pop culture and the arts which means questions can be about anything from Shakespeare to Taylor Swift.
Even with such a broad range of topics, Saltzman emphasized that students don’t need to be trivia experts to join.
“I always like to tell our new members, if you don’t think you’re smart, go to a tournament and you’ll probably be able to answer at least five or six questions because it’s just so random, so you might as well just give it a shot,” Saltzman said.
The CVC tournament featured 16 teams competing in seven rounds. The stakes were high and every match mattered.
“Each game you have one loss or one win that determines where you are in the standings,” Saltzman said.
The team won all preliminary matches, sometimes just barely skating by.
In the final round of the tournament, the team found themselves up against Conneaut, a school they had faced earlier in the day, and won the final match by just one point, scored by Saltzman.
The team has grown considerably in recent years.
“My sophomore year was five (students), and this year on our spreadsheet we have 42 kids, which is kind of insane,” Saltzman said.
“The students drive this club,” Greer-Jones said. “They are the ones who have been getting more people involved. Having more students has really helped us fill in knowledge gaps and build stronger teams.”
Most of these new members are freshmen.
“We have a lot of new members who are very committed to our club, especially our freshmen; they’ve been going above and beyond, competing in tournaments, studying, and really just trying their best while still having fun,” Saltzman said.
One standout person this year is freshman Nirvana Bhusal, a new member with impressive knowledge of geography.
“Time after time she would know stuff that even the seniors have no idea of, that I had no idea of and it’s insane because she’s only 13,” Greer-Jones said.
“She has some good confident moments and we thought that was awesome,” she said.
The team has actively been recruiting members from the school’s band, which helped diversify their knowledge base.
Greer-Jones and Saltzman both emphasize that beyond the competition, the club offers students a chance to learn, grow, and have a sense of community they may not have had before. They say you don’t have to be super knowledgeable to join, as you can grow your knowledge while in the club. It’s important to note that knowledge can look and feel different for everyone.
“My advice would be that you do not realize how much knowledge you have in so many different ways, so I want students who come and join us to feel supported and understand what different knowledge everyone has,” Greer-Jones said.
For those interested in joining, the commitment level is flexible. The club meets once a week for about 30 minutes to an hour. Tournaments are usually on Saturdays, and participants can practice as much or as little as they like.
