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GHS science, interdisciplinary teams finish in top spots at Academic Super Bowl
WEST LAFAYETTE — The tradition of Indiana Academic Super Bowl titles continued for Greencastle High School on Saturday.
The GHS science and interdisciplinary teams each claimed Class 3 championships, bringing the school’s total number of titles to 35, still a state record.
The science team correctly answered 22 out of 25 questions, one point better than second-place Eastern Hancock. The interdisciplinary team, meanwhile, scored 18 of 25, also winning by a point over Bremen High School.
It’s Greencastle’s third consecutive science crown and second straight interdisciplinary. However, this was no case of simple dominance, as each squad had to dig out of an early deficit.
“You try not to put too much pressure on them because it’s just so hard, so when you do, you’re so excited,” science and interdisciplinary coach Brad Kingma said. “They worked hard and they deserve it. They were really excited, so that’s great.”
Elsewhere, the GHS math team’s score of 20 was just a single point behind the first-place score of Bremen. The English team, meanwhile, finished in fifth place with 19 points.
The Cloverdale High School English team was sixth in Class 4 with 17 points.
While the GHS science team won its third straight title and ninth overall, the team of captain Blake Pingleton, Gavin Pingleton, Ty Ishikawa and Brooks Baker-Watson was playing from behind early.
“We missed our very first question, so we were kind of behind for a good number of questions,” Kingma said.
However, the team then answered 13 consecutive questions right, overtaking Eastern Hancock about halfway through the competition.
“Once we took the lead, we kind of stayed ahead, but we kept staying ahead by one question,” Kingma said.
Even when they missed two out of three questions later, so did pretty much everyone else, with the leaders pretty much matching each other question for question.
“Those were some doozies that everybody was missing, and then we got everything from there on out, and so did the other team,” Kingma said.
The interdisciplinary team was similarly evenly matched with Bremen but stumbled relatively late, missing questions 19 and 20 before going on to get the last five right.
“We were able to jump ahead,” Kingma said.
As the name indicates, the team is drawn from across the individual areas of focus, with participants including captain Alice Howard, Sabina Seaman, Ishikawa, Cam Benedix and Baker-Watson.
Additionally, while Kingma was the coach of the team, he shared credit with fellow coaches and disciplines on the victory, noting that the misses came from across the board.
“It was pretty even,” Kingma said. “We missed one question in every discipline, and then we missed the two sets of questions that are usually the lowest scores. That means everybody did kind of well.”
As for the GHS math team, the one-point loss was a matter of coming in tied for second in a three-horse race that included champions Bremen and third-place Evansville Reitz.
“Math came so close to winning,” coach Gayle Hansen said. “Just needed one more point and they would have been tied for first.”
The math team included Howard, Mylea Mangus, Tobey Benedix, captain Ishikawa and Cam Benedix.
For English, which came in seeded second, team members Cam Benedix, Sabina Seaman and Hannah Seaman had to compete without Rebecca Hebb, who was unavailable for the state finals.
The sixth-place Cloverdale English team included Jaidyn Helton, Phoenix Breedlove, Sierra Kelley and Kayley Winkles.
In all, Greencastle’s 35 titles since 1990 include six in English, two in fine arts, five in math, nine in science, two in social studies and 11 in interdisciplinary.