Members of the Academic Challenge team traveled to Charlottesville to compete for the first time this year

The Academic Challenge team had a competition at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on November 11, and four students, seniors Lucy Greenman, Sina Keramat, Samuel Shapiro, and Richard Robles, ranked in the top 100 individual scorers; Greenman and Robles landed in the top 25.

“It was fantastic,” said  Greenman. “It was also a great chance for our team to hang out and have fun as a whole, which we definitely did.”

The team also competes at the district competitions, which take place from December to January and sometimes longer.

Academic Challenge is a VHSL sanctioned team in which students compete by answering questions on topics ranging from academic subject areas including Art, English, Foreign Languages, Geography, History, Mathematics, Music and Science to current events and miscellaneous questions.

“My favorite thing about Academic Challenge is answering challenging new questions and expanding my knowledge about different topics,” said freshman Kiran Bajaj.

The Potomac Falls team practices on Thursdays after school in preparation for future competitions against other high schools in the area and in Virginia. George Owens, English teacher, and Marquerite Seling, ELL teacher, are the club co-sponsors.

Every practice is divided into two “toss-up” rounds and one directed round. Before beginning either round, the team is divided into two smaller groups of around six people.

During the toss-ups round, the teams are competing to see who can buzz in the answer to hopefully get the question right. Each team member works individually to answer the question as opposed to in the directed round where questions are directed to a certain team and they must work together to come up with an answer.

Last year the Potomac Falls team fell to Massaponax High School during the regional competition. However, the team won for divisionals last year.

“One of my favorite memories on the team is my freshman year when we qualified for the National Academic Quiz Bowl tournament in Alexandria,” said junior Trevor Hanzel. “I enjoyed that tournament because we actually went pretty far and ended up getting fifth place.”