Greencastle sending four teams to Indiana Academic Super Bowl finals

The tradition continues ...

Greencastle High School, winners of three state academic titles in 2016, will be sending four of its teams to the 2017 state finals of the Indiana Academic Super Bowl Saturday, May 6 at Purdue University.

Greencastle will be hoping to build upon the 25 state titles it has earned overall since its Science team brought home the initial championship hardware in 1990. Even more impressively, GHS has won multiple titles each of the past four years and has posted two straight years of capturing three of the six Class 3 state titles.

In competition at GHS Tuesday evening, the Greencastle Fine Arts team led the way, posting the top score in the state among Class 3 schools with 20 correct answers out of 25 questions.

Coached by Robin Johnson, the GHS Fine Arts team is composed of Bonni Bruce, Taylor Cash, Eisele Marlee, Kristy Huang and Cecilia Pohlar.

The GHS Fine Arts team will be joined at Purdue by:

-- The GHS Math team, which had 18 correct responses for the third-best score in the state behind only Wabash High School (20) and Evansville Mater Dei (19). Coached by Gayle Hansen the Math team includes Simon Foss, Kristy Huang, Sean Ramey, Nicholas Seaman, Michael White and Ben Wilkerson.

-- The two-time defending state champion GHS Science team, which correctly answered 19 questions for third best in Class 3 behind only Centerville (22) and Park Tudor (21) in the preliminary competition. Coached by Brad Kingma, its members include Connor Crary, Jack Howard, Nicholas Seaman, Alex Weliever and Ben Wilkerson.

-- The four-time defending state champion GHS English team, which tied for the fourth-best score in the state at 17 with Ft. Wayne Bishop Luers, Heritage Hills and Bremen. Coached by Nicole Burkhalter, its members are Kelly Hansen, Alex Weliever and Ben Gellman.

North Putnam, South Putnam and Cloverdale all competed at the local level as well, although none of their teams was able to advance to state.

North Putnam came the closest, falling one point shy in Fine Arts competition with 16 correct answers, while the Cloverdale interdisciplinary team came up two questions short in its contest, tying with Greencastle for 14th place overall in the state that category.

The top seven scores across the state in each discipline earn a berth at the state finals. The theme of this year's competition was the French Revolution.

Greencastle hosted 19 schools and more than 400 students from west-central Indiana.

In addition to the county schools, teams competing at GHS represented Avon, Brownsburg, Danville, Northview, Owen Valley, Plainfield, Riverton Parke, Rockville, Shakamak, South Vermillion, Terre Haute North, Terre Haute South, Tri-West Hendricks, Turkey Run and West Vigo high schools.

Schools are divided into four classes based on school size. Each school was represented in the competition by three to five persons on a subject area squad with as many as 30 students representing the school on the various squads. Subject area rounds were held in Science, Fine Arts, Social Studies, Math and English. A sixth round of competition, Interdisciplinary, was the climax of the competition

Cloverdale, Greencastle, North Putnam and South Putnam all competed in Class 3. Results of the area competition for Class 3 are as follows:

-- Science: 1st, Greencastle; 2nd, North Putnam; 3rd, Cloverdale.

-- Fine Arts: 1st, Greencastle; 2nd, South Vermillion; 3rd, North Putnam and West Vigo (tie).

-- Social Studies: 1st, North Putnam; 2nd, South Putnam; 3rd, South Vermillion.

-- Math: 1st, Greencastle; 2nd, South Vermillion; 3rd, North Putnam.

-- English: 1st, Greencastle; 2nd, North Putnam; 3rd, Tri-West.

-- Interdisciplinary: 1st, South Vermillion; 2nd, Greencastle; 3rd, Cloverdale.

Approximately 5,800 students competed in the 31st annual statewide academic competition from 300 high schools.