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State titles on the line Saturday for five county academic teams
Greencastle High School is out to continue its long tradition of producing state champion academic teams Saturday, while two other Putnam County schools are hoping to begin a tradition with their first titles when competition is staged at the 2019 Indiana Academic Super Bowl state finals at Purdue University.
GHS is sending its Math, Science and Fine Arts teams to the state finals, joining the Science teams from North Putnam and Cloverdale high schools in Class 3 competition.
The Putnam County quintet is led by the GHS Math Team, which posted the best score in Class 3 area competition on April 16 at GHS, answering 23 of the 25 questions correctly. The GHS Math Team will be defending its 2018 state title, one of 27 state championships Greencastle has accumulated since first winning the state competition in science 1990.
Members of the top-seeded Greencastle High School Math Team, coached by Coach Gayle Hansen, are captain Ben Wilkerson, Connor Crary, Casey Crary, Michael White and Maieasha Rashid.
Meanwhile, North Putnam High School is sending it Science Team, which tied for the third spot in Class 3 with the Cloverdale and GHS teams, all of which answered 21 questions correctly in area competition. They were behind only Scecina Memorial of Indianapolis and Lakeland High School of LaGrange with scores of 23 and 22, respectively.
The GHS Science Team, coached by Brad Kingma, is also captained by Ben Wilkerson with Bailey Williams, Connor Crary, Casey Crary, Noah Schimpf, Jack Howard and Iris Mackenzie as members.
The North Putnam Science Team, coached by Annette Maier, includes Wesley Jacobs, Matthew Trotter, Kyle Young and Emily Fink.
The Cloverdale Science Team, coached by Kathryn Hoffmann, is composed of Deelaynee Lauer, Chris Benitez and Katie Selig.
Meanwhile, the Greencastle Fine Arts Team, which answered 15 questions correctly for the third-best score among all Class 3 teams, is also in action Saturday. The fine arts team is looking for its first state title since 1991.
Coached by Robin Johnson and Pamalee Smith, the GHS Fine Arts team is composed of Vivian Savage, Sarah Heithaus, Mary Katherine Asbell and Anastasia Wood.
During area competition, two other local teams fell just short of making the top seven squads to qualify for the state finals.
The North Putnam Social Studies Team, posting a score of 21, was one right answer shy of a trip to Purdue, while the Greencastle Interdisciplinary Team, with 16 correct answers, landed in an eight-way tie for the fifth spot but lost out in the tie-breaker.
Area competition results also put an end to an amazing run by the Greencastle English Team, which had captured six consecutive state championships through 2018, falling one year shy of the state record of seven straight titles accomplished by Penn High School in social studies.
Greencastle’s overall 27 state titles include at least one in each of the six disciplines -- with nine interdisciplinary competition titles, six each for science and English (all in a row, 2013-18), three for math (including 2018), two for social studies and one for fine arts.
The 27 state titles tie GHS with West Lafayette for statewide dominance while Randolph Southern High School owns 26.
Editor’s note: A photo of the GHS Math Team was published with the area results both online and in the Friday, April 19 paper and is not repeated with this story.