After announcing the 2011-2012 Academic Superbowl subject squad captains, head coach Matt Dillon said he is “confident” in his team and his captains. In the approaching weeks, subject captains Jeff Hou, Nicholas “Nick” Muller, Victor Xu, Caroline Zhang and Rushvi Desai will begin scheduling practices and dividing up the material in preparation for the upcoming competition on May 4.

“I think they come with prior experience. They’ve all been members in the past and have seen the successes and failures in the past,” Dillon said of his selections. “They all had open schedules, so they could commit. I felt like they had some pretty good ideas on what they wanted to change and what their goals were.”

In the competition, the role of the captains is equally as important as in practices. The captains have the “final say” in regards to answering the questions.

“You may get two out of the three seated at the table that don’t agree,” Dillon said. “The captain is the deciding vote; the ‘buck’ basically stops with the captain.”

Though the major positions have already been chosen, the club of approximately 25 members has only just begun studying the material. Muller, first time captain and senior,  said, “We’ve divided into our respective subject teams and were given our time period and geographic area to study. We’ve received our source material to study, too. For social studies, we receive two sources to study. A typical practice would be at the Carmel Public Library where we would get together and go over practice questions and pool our collective knowledge on the subject. I’d say most of the work is done outside of a practice for team members.”

Dillon said he also recommends that students begin going through the information, but they should try to split up the material into “digestible” pieces.

“Divide it into little goals, that you can actually reach, and do it in a method that is fun for everyone,” Dillon said. “No one wants to show up and be lectured. Make it a game, make something fun out of it, and enjoy.”