Academic SuperBowl to compete in competitions with two captains on the science team. This decision was made by staff sponsor James Ziegler in an effort to reduce stress on students and experiment with co-captaining.  

“A lot of our captains are seniors and we had a lot of applicants for the science captain position this year. But the other thing with senior year is that it’s really hectic especially in the beginning part of the year,” Ziegler said. “We’ve never done a co-captain position, I wanted to test it out this year… So it’s really about experimenting with something different and seeing how it goes while at the same time trying to relieve some pressure from some of the seniors who do have a lot of obligations.”

However, the Indiana Association of Principals (IASP) requires each team to have only one captain. According to Ziegler, the science team is planning on rotating between the two captains and taking turns taking the role of captain. 

“When the competition time comes, there will be one official captain. So for the science team… we’ll probably have them alternate between the two of them,” Ziegler said. “At the first invitational, one of them will be the official captain. At the second invitational, whoever didn’t do it the first time will be the official captain.” 

For science captains Zeeshan Syed and Prajwal Vijay Kumar, Ziegler’s decision has mostly benefited them. 

“It makes our work a lot easier because no longer does one person have to take all the burden of planning and prepping the entire team. It’s split between the both of us and it just makes it a lot easier.” Syed said. 

“I’d say it’s more of a benefit having two captains than one.” Vijay Kumar said. 

According to Syed and Vijay Kumar, co-captaining has its downsides as well. Problems in communication are common with the science team.

“The main downside that we usually have is communication because if one of us starts a message thread or like an email thread, usually our club members will only respond to that person and we’d have to forward it to the other one.” Syed said. 

Ziegler said he feels confident in the two captains and hopes that co-captaining will help the team succeed.

“Zeeshan and Prajwal both seemed really open to it,” Ziegler said. “They liked the idea, they thought they would work well with a partner and it would also help relieve some stress from them.” By Sophia Zhang