Last Saturday was kind of Mer’s day, but it was largely taken up by a school-related event. Last spring, Mer volunteered to start up a junior high team for Academic Challenge. Academic Challenge is sort of like trivia and Jeopardy!, played by students. CVCA has had an Academic Challenge program for high school since Mer was at CVCA (she was in fact the captain of her team), but CVCA has never had a junior high team before.

So, Mer founded a team with the goal of helping to build the high school team, and also getting involved with students. She loves trivia and knowledge, so it is a good fit. Mer took the team to two meets in the fall semester, and then took a couple months off. The team started practicing in February for the state meet, which was held last Saturday at John Carroll University in Cleveland. So, that is where we were for much of the day.

John Carroll is a small but pretty campus. They took good care of us, including opening up their excellent cafeteria for our lunch (the school seemed to be on break, as there were no students about). We had some trouble finding parking or even a car-accessible entrance to the campus; the school seems very protective of the grounds. We parked on the street and made our way to the building where the competition was to take place.

This was a pretty big meet, with junior high and high school teams. Many schools sent a junior high, a junior varsity, and a varsity team. CVCA sent two junior high teams – a seventh grade and an eighth grade team. In all, there were sixteen junior high teams competing.

For the actual competition, two teams would square off, with four players playing at once. Each round was made up of four parts, and substitutions could be made between each part. Mer made sure everyone on each of our two teams got to play at least once per round, although her best players stayed in through all four parts of each round.

Our teams did well. The seventh grade team went 3-3 through the six rounds, and our eighth grade team went 4-2, losing two very close games (one round was decided on the last question). All teams that went 4-2 or better qualified for the finals, so nine of the sixteen teams moved on.

I got roped into being a question reader since several readers did not show up. I liked reading – I found the questions interesting, and I had several coaches tell me I was the best and clearest reader their teams had had during the day. That was satisfying. Mer joined me to help me for the last two regular rounds after lunch, and for one round of the playoffs. As such, I did not get to see CVCA compete except for the very first round, when they happened to be in the room in which I was helping.

CVCA’s eighth grade team won their first-round game in the playoffs, and then the tournament runners had enough help, so we got to see our kids square off against Port Clinton, last year’s state champs. It was a competitive game, but we got out to an early lead by getting a lucky category draw of “The Bible.”  Our students did very well in that category, and maintained a lead for the rest of the game, and so advanced on to the final round.As one of the top four teams of the tournament, the team qualified to go to the national competition in Chicago in June. That was unexpected, so it looks as if Mer’s season will go on.

In the final round, we faced off against Hawken, an excellent (and pricey) private school that sent three junior high teams to compete. Our team was facing a Hawken team to whom they had lost in the first round of the day. The game was very competitive, but Mer’s team managed to win by one question. We have since heard that there was a dispute that someone in the audience said an answer that our team got right, so they gave Hawken a co-championship; nonetheless, CVCA’s eighth grade team won the state tournament in the team’s first full year of existence. I was very proud of Mer and her students!

Playing nine rounds of games, plus lunch, plus travel time took a fair amount of time. As such, we did not get home until early evening, and we were both pretty tired. So, we pretty much stayed home, but it was an interesting day.