Five local teams advance to state in Academic Super Bowl

A pair of local schools are sending a combined five teams to the Indiana Academic Super Bowl State Finals at Purdue University next month.

Greencastle High School will try to maintain its state record for overall Academic Super Bowl titles when the English, science, math and interdisciplinary teams all compete. Meanwhile, Cloverdale High School will be sending a representative for the second straight year, with the English team making the cut this year.

Competing in Class 3, Greencastle had the second-best score in the state in English, with 24 out of 25 possible points, as well as second-best in science with 22 points and third-best in math with 18 points.

Interdisciplinary, meanwhile, was configured differently at the area level this year, with no team actually competing at the local level. Instead, teams that have the highest cumulative scores across the five subject area disciplines are invited to field an interdisciplinary squad at state.

Greencastle had the second-best combined score, dropping a tie-breaker to top seed North Posey, with 98 points out of a possible 125.

In this way, the 16 points from the GHS fine arts team and 14 from social studies, though not high enough to advance, contributed to the interdisciplinary state berth.

Meanwhile, Cloverdale had the fifth-best overall English score in Class 4, good enough for a finals berth of its own.

Cloverdale’s science team finished with 16 points, fine arts with 13 points, math with eight points and social studies with three points.

Competing in Class 3 like Greencastle, North Putnam’s English team finished with 20 points, science with 16, social studies with 16, fine arts with 13 and math with seven.

South Putnam did not compete in Academic Super Bowl.

All state finalists will compete at Purdue University on Saturday, May 6.