Menu
GHS captures 3 Academic Super Bowl titles
Putnam County sent seven teams to the 2016 Indiana Academic Super Bowl state finals and none of them finished lower than fourth Saturday.
Greencastle High School, continuing its long tradition of success in the annual contest staged at Purdue University, earned three more state championships, bringing home titles in English, Science and Interdisciplinary competition.
Meanwhile, the GHS Social Studies team captured third place in the Class 3 division, while the Greencastle Math team came in fourth in the state contest.
North Putnam, which sent two teams to the finals for what is believed to be the first time ever, brought home fourth-place finishes in both English and Fine Arts.
With three academic state championships earned Saturday, Greencastle marks two straight years of winning three of the six overall Super Bowl categories, while posting multiple titles in each of the past four seasons.
Adding those three titles to its Super Bowl history and tradition makes it a total of 25 state championships in all since the GHS Science team brought home the school's first title in 1990.
Longtime academic coach Nicole (Kempf) Burkhalter -- who is in charge of the English and Interdisciplinary teams that both captured titles for the fourth consecutive year on Saturday -- pointed out that the Interdisciplinary team dominated its class in winning by four points.
"I choose the team and practice strategies with them but the key to their success is a strong foundation from all of their subject-area coaches," Burkhalter stressed.
Interdisciplinary questions can come from any of the other five disciplines -- Science, Fine Arts, Social Studies, Math and English.
Team members include Captain Zach Wilkerson, Kelly Hansen, Kate Rose Parsons, Colin Dombrowski and Hillary Johnson.
Meanwhile, GHS English team members Captain Kelly Hansen, Alex Weliever and Ben Gellman endured an incredibly busy week of tests, Burkhalter said, but still prevailed by coming on strong at the end.
The coach explained that the English team was forced to be "more self-sufficient" this year because personal circumstances kept her away from practice on more than one occasion.
"They always met and did a great job using the strategies we worked on last year. I am extremely proud of them," Burk- halter said.
Factoring into the degree of difficulty in defending their title Saturday was the fact Hansen had three AP tests last week, while Weliever took two. Gellman, meanwhile, is in the middle of track season and will take an AP test himself on Monday.
"They didn't panic when they fell behind," Burkhalter praised, "and were able to slowly pull ahead and hang on through the last question."
The championship GHS Science team, coached by Brad Kingma, is made up of Sam Savage, Mattia Seaman, Nick Seaman, Connor Stimpert, Alex Thomas and Zach Wilkerson.
The GHS Social Studies team, coached by retiring teacher Glenn Hile, took third in the state on Saturday. It has Colin Dombrowski, Addison Hughes, Ethan Mooney, Lily Spencer and Katie Rose Parsons as members.
Members of the GHS Math team are Simon Foss, Kristy Huang, Sean Ramey, Sam Savage, Nick Seaman and Zach Wilkerson. The Math team, coached by Samantha Burke, brought home fourth place in Class 3.
North Putnam, meanwhile, got a fourth place from its Fine Arts team and a tie for fourth with its English team.
The NPHS Fine Arts team, coached by Brittney Hardy, features members Alanna Nunez, Annie Peabody, Dawson Ottinger, Ronee Willoughby and Rachel Hamilton.
Meanwhile, members of the Monique Fields-coached NPHS English team are Jessica Copeland, Jessica Hays and Emily Stine.
"It was great to be there and have both teams do well," Fields said of the state finals atmosphere at Purdue.
The English team, she said, "finished really strong" by answering four of the five tie-breaker questions correctly.
Schools competing in the Academic Super Bowl are divided into four classes based on school size. Theme of this year's competition was "Hoosier Heritage."
