Academic Super Bowl selects captains, prepares for competition season

Claire He

November 14, 2023

Alia Karim, Social Studies captain and senior, studies for her subject area by reading through a textbook on United States history. This year, she will lead other Social Studies competitors in the practice invitationals and subsequent meets. “I’m looking forward to seeing what competitions will look like, as well as our team bonding activities and how our team dynamic will work when we do these competitions,” Karim said. “Who will answer these questions, and who will put themselves out there?”

Academic Super Bowl held its call-out meeting in Room E212 on Oct. 17, after which it began the process of selecting captains for each competitive subject: Science, Fine Arts, Social Studies, Math and English.

According to club sponsor James Ziegler, the selections for captains began with interviews; this year, the club had more applicants than in any year prior, with 15 people vying for a position. Academic Super Bowl announced its 2023-2024 team captains on Nov. 1.

“Now that each of our subject area teams have who their captains are going to be, as well as potential team members, those teams are starting their individual subject area team meetings,” Ziegler said.

Alia Karim, Social Studies captain and senior, leads one of those subject area teams.

“We want people to have the resources to understand this text, since it’s a pretty hefty textbook,” Karim said. “I go around and I look through the textbook; I find subject areas and separate them; I try to make them into learnable lessons.”

According to Ziegler, the theme for the 2023-2024 Academic Super Bowl competition is “The End of the Second Millennium: The 1980s and 1990s”.

“I think it’s kind of a cool topic in the sense that unlike previous years, where we’ve had a topic like ‘Ancient Mesopotamia’ or something like that,” Ziegler said, “having a topic that’s a little bit more contemporary, especially for the Fine Arts section for this year’s competition, is something students are excited about.”

“I’m really excited about the type of questions we’ll get—I know it’s about ‘90s history, that era of American history where there’s a bunch of scandals, and all these cool things,” Karim said.

Ziegler said the competitions occur primarily in the second semester, beginning with two practice invitationals in February or March. Following the practice invitationals is the Area competition, which will determine whether the team advances to the State competition, held at Purdue University.

“Honestly, the thing I’m most excited about each year is the new students I get to work with—just seeing students building bonds and enjoying a love of learning,” Ziegler said. “My goal is for students to feel connected, to feel welcome, to make new friends out of our team—as well as to just pursue their passion of learning.”

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Academic Super Bowl selects captains, prepares for competition season

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