West Holmes grabs Tri-County Academic Challenge Championship title
By Jenna Polen
February 19, 2012
324
Summary: West Holmes takes the tenth annual Tri-County Academic Challenge Meet championship title on Saturday, Feb. 18 and moves on to regional tournament.
West Holmes hosted the Tenth annual Tri-County Academic Challenge Meet, coordinated by the Tri-County Educational service Center on Saturday, Feb. 18.
The Knights seemed to surpass all competition including a close win against Wooster in the first round, then blowing Triway out of the water to go up against Orrville for the Div. 2 finals, where West Holmes came away with a 140-65 win.
We all really did well today. We got down in our first match against Wooster 30-0 but we woke up and came back to win it. It really comes down to the questions, either they are in your favor or they arent. We struggled a lot with literature questions and math today, said West Holmes Academic Challenge Advisor Helga Long.
Orrville had a good day along with the Knights, beating Northwestern, Triway, and Wooster to meet West Holmes in the finals.
I feel like we did a really good job today, this was a good way to end my Academic Challenge career. Plus its always fun to meet students from other schools, and Im just here to have fun, said Orrville Academic Challenge senior and captain Jake Firas.
For the Div. 1 competitors Hiland and Loudonville both came out on top for the day. The Hawks suffered an early loss to Chippewa, but came back to beat Smithville and Hillsdale to meet the Redbirds in the finals.
I feel like we did really well today. We practice 2 or 3 times a week and use questions from past tournaments to help during the important tournaments like today. I always try to play everyone and alternate, but our captain Caleb Halfhill always plays, said Hiland Academic Challenge Advisor Don Blanchard.
The Hawks fell just short from the Div. 1 championship, sending Loudonville into the finals with West Holmes. The Knights came out on top with virtually no sweat to take a 90-10 victory over the Redbirds and walk away with the Tri-County Championship.
This is a great tournament and we appreciate West Holmes hosting it, we are pretty happy with our day. West Holmes is a great team and we usually meet them in the middle, said Loudonville Academic Challenge Advisor Josh Miller.
The tournament was coordinated by the Tri-County Educational Service Center, and all Tri-County schools were invited to participate.
The competition has two tournaments one for oral questions and then there is also a written test that students can take if they arent competing. This usually gives underclassmen some experience and confidence for when they participate in the rounds as they get older, said the Tri-County Educational Services Center consultant Karen Burkett. All the teams are awesome and each district has a different personality and strengths.
West Holmes walked away the Tri-County tournament with a victory and some confidence for their next big tournament at Copley.
This tournament was good practice for our toughest tournament next weekend, Copley. Copley is always really difficult because we are in the Division 1, our students are going to be competing with teams who are on their way to competing in the National Tournament, said Long.
West Holmes senior Captain Kirk Hendrick said, We are all excited to go to regionals and hopefully do as well as we did today. Last year we lost two seniors but we are continuing to grow and we hope to do well at the rest of the tournaments.
The Knights will participate in the Regional Academic Challenge tournament at the end of April.
