Kristen Mitchell, Co-Editor-in-Chief

Saturdays in the Southeast rarely include much academic activity. Yet the Academic Team proved this to be untrue.

While other students attended class here at school on Nov. 17, the CHS Academic Team was off on another adventure competing against the top teams in the Southeast.

They went to the annual Brookwood High School Scholar's Bowl near Atlanta, Georgia, which is the largest high school quiz bowl tournament in the nation.

The team was very pleased with their performance throughout the day. They competed with 138 teams from nine states. The Cavaliers led in scoring for the day with 4,160 team points.

They played several tough rounds with the closest against Indian Springs, Alabama--winning with a margin of 10 points at 280-270.

The championship round against Dorman of Spartanburg, South Carolina came down to the last question. dorman needed to answer the last question to tie with Cookeville and to answer the tie breaker.

Dorman buzzed in and answered incorrectly. The cavaliers waited until the end of the question with Funmi Ojo correctly answering Ives as the composer. The final score was 280-240.

CHS A-team placed first. This is the first time Cookeville won this tournament.

Basking in his victory, senior captain Sam Matson says, "November 17, 2001 a day which will live in infamy. The prettiest team won again! We played our best quiz bowl ever. It paid off and we won."

Carolyn Hawkins, coach of the CHS Academic team comments, "Last year I said that our fifth place finish at Brookwood has set a precedent for future academic teams at CHS. We had never advanced beyond the round of 32 until last year..."

"Winning the championship trophy this year against such a strong field of academic quiz bowl teams is the highlight of our season so far, and it shows how hard our team has worked to reach the national level of play in this competitive arena," says Hawkins.

Teams two and three also played will and placed in the top 32 of the 138 teams.

"The level of competition at Brookwood was very high. "Almost all of team 2's morning matches were decided by less than 30 points. We won a couple on the last 20 point question. As for things we did well, what team 2 did best was hang in there in close matches and win several important ones. Especially in the second round of playoffs," Josh Bohannan comments about team two.

Another championship that the Academic team has added to their list is the Knowledge Master Open computer tournament. The Cavaliers placed first in Tennessee and ninth in the nation for this year's tournament.

Article prepared for web by Curits Cooper.

Home page | Archives | More December 2001 Articles