Schools
Creekland Wins Academic Bowl
The Creekland Middle School Academic team recently defeated the county's other schools in a battle of brains.
Middle School's Academic Team won first place in the Cherokee County Academic Bowl competition on Dec.11.
The competition was held at Freedom Middle School and each of the county's seven middle schools was represented.
Creekland's winning team is spearheaded by student captain, eighth grader Sarah Buelow. Team members include Josh Whitley, John McPherson, Will Hood, Garrett Johnston, Grant Foster, Christopher Lipscomb, Andrew Jones, John Touchstone, Kelly Hart, Ben Vester, Miranda Bourdeau, Grant Howell, and Connor McCann.
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Coaches are teachers Annabel Ballew, John Carter, John Jensen and Mark Nazemzadeh.
Students tried out to be on the team for two days at the beginning of the school year.
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"Any Creekland student is welcome to tryout," Carter said. "The tryout consisted of a written test and some practice rounds to test both scope of knowledge and performance with a buzzer."
Once selected to the team, students commit to weekly practices that started in August.
The Academic Bowl is a competition that tests students on five subject matters that correlate to the middle school curriculum. The subject areas covered are math, language arts/literature, social studies/sciences, natural sciences and miscellaneous.
Miscellaneous topics could include visual arts, music, sports, current events and popular culture.
The format of the competition is a round robin tournament with each team playing every opponent team in one round.
Each round is comprised of ten 'toss-up' questions. A toss-up question is read to both teams. At any time a single player can buzz in and give an answer, even if the reader has not completed the question. If the player gets the correct answer, that team receives a bonus question upon which the team is allowed to confer. If the player does not produce the right answer the other team will get the opportunity to buzz in to answer the question.
The next step for the Creekland team will be the regional competition, which will be held on Jan. 9 at Freedom Middle School.
The top two teams at regionals will advance to the state semi-finals on Jan. 23 at a school to be determined. The top two teams at the semi-final tournament will advance to the state finals on Feb. 6 at a school to be determined.