GHS English team earns fifth straight state championship

Saturday, May 6, 2017
It's five titles in a row now for the state champion Greencastle High School English team, which captured another Class 3 crown Saturday in 2017 Indiana Academic Super Bowl competition at Purdue University. Coached by Nicole Burkhalter (right), team members are (from left) Ben Gellman, Kelly Hansen and Alex Weliever. (Courtesy photo)

It may take the likes of a championship English team to determine whether five-peat is actually a real word (think repeat, three-peat) or not, but we know where to find one.

At Greencastle High School, where the GHS English team captured its fifth consecutive state championship Saturday in the finals of the Indiana Academic Super Bowl at Purdue University.

Sending four teams -- English, Fine Arts, Math and Science -- to the finals this year, the Greencastle group also earned a second place by the Math team Saturday in Class 3 competition.

The state champion English team, composed of Ben Gellman, Kelly Hansen and Alex Weliever, is coached by Nicole Burkhalter.

Although entering the state competition with the fourth best score among the seven finalists during district competition -- 17 right answers out of 25 questions -- the GHS English squad answered 19 correctly Saturday to prevail over second-place and top seed Ft. Wayne Bishop Luers (17) and third-place Bremen (16).

While the English team has won five in a row overall, the Tiger Cub trio of Gellman, Hansen and Weliever has now claimed three straight titles as teammates.

“This year, these three did all of their own research,” Coach Burkhalter praised. “I’ve always told them to learn the material well enough to teach it. After working together for three years, they needed very little guidance from me this time around.

“My main hope for these amazing kids is that their English team experience with research and literary analysis will help them when they leave high school.”

Meanwhile, the state runner-up GHS Math team, coached by Gayle Hansen, includes Simon Foss, Kristy Huang, Sean Ramey, Nicholas Seaman, Michael White and Ben Wilkerson as members.

The Math team answered 17 of the 25 questions correctly, finishing second to Park Tudor, which had 19 right responses in the Class 3 competition. Third-place Indianapolis Scecina had 14 questions right.

“I’m very proud of this team,” GHS Math coach Hansen said. “They have put in a lot of hard work. They all learned some math that isn’t part of our high school math curriculum.”

The Greencastle High School Math team, finishing as state runner-up in Indiana Academic Super Bowl competition Saturday at Purdue University, is coached by Gayle Hansen (left). Team members are (from Hansen's left) Kristy Huang, Sean Ramey, Ben Wilkerson, Nicholas Seaman, Simon Foss and Michael White. (Courtesy photo)

Saturday’s state title is the 26th GHS has earned overall since its Science team brought home the initial championship hardware in 1990. GHS had won multiple titles each of the previous four years and had posted two straight years of capturing three of the six Class 3 state titles in 2015 and 2016.

The other GHS state finalists this year were:

-- The Fine Arts Team, coached by Robin Johnson and made up of teammates Bonni Bruce, Taylor Cash, Eisele Marlee, Kristy Huang and Cecilia Pohlar.

-- The Science team, coached by Brad Kingma, with Connor Crary, Jack Howard, Nicholas Seaman, Alex Weliever and Ben Wilkerson as members.

Theme of this year’s competition was the French Revolution. Schools are divided into four classes based on school size.

The top seven district scores from across the state in each discipline (social studies and interdisciplinary are the other two) earned a berth in Saturday’s state finals. No other Putnam County school qualified a team this year.

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