The image of an academic team full of the schools’ geek squad is long gone and our A team not only features a fly-fisher, but also a fashionista. There are 4 sub-teams at HHS, the A, B, C, and D teams. Senior Amanda Ray is the captain of the A team.
“As captain, I am in charge of answering questions that are directed to the team during the second round of competition,” Ray said.
Ray is also able to defer questions to members of her team, referring to them by their chair numbers.
The A team is senior heavy this year, but when asked the 3 seniors were excited about this year’s team. “I joined last year because Ms. Jones was the coach and she always told me I should join. I did and it definitely wasn’t a mistake,” senior Sandy Hernandez said.
“I joined the team because I thought it would look good to colleges, but I've come back for my third year on the team because even though it's nerdy, it's a lot of fun,” Ray said.
Ray also convinced senior Weston Reynolds to join the team. “I joined the team at the behest of Amanda Ray, but I'm a nerd at heart, so it's all good,” Reynolds said.
The team’s competitions consist of 3 separate rounds of thirty minutes with 3 different sections. One section is a written twenty question test. The captain is responsible for supplying the team’s collective answer.
“I usually do best with science, French, or pop culture questions,” Ray said. The team members are consulted by the captain when the captain needs assistance with an answer.
“My area of expertise is anything inane and incredibly obscure--I do okay on the scholastic questions sometimes. The highlight of last season for me was answering a question about George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelics, and following it up with a question about "Scrubs"” Reynolds said.
Hernandez also brings a little something special to the team. “I usually answer the questions about movies, language and even biblical questions. Weston Reynolds covers the sports questions and Amanda Ray covers the biology, chemistry, and English questions. Sophomore Xuyi Guo is amazing at the computation questions.” Hernandez said.
Guo is the youngest member on the A team. His main area of expertise is on the math and computation questions but he can answer anything.
“I joined the team because one of my teachers told me I would be good at it. It is fun and pretty laid back though.” Guo said.
Even with a new teacher as the team’s coach, the A team is still happy. “Ms. Jones brought a level of sauceyness but now Mr. Jarret is the head coach and he is really cool too,” Hernandez said.
The A team was composed of mostly seniors last year, but this year’s senior class was able to pick up the slack.
“All the seniors graduated and we thought it would be hard, but I think the seniors just stepped up, so it should be a good season,” Hernandez said.
The academic team practices once a week, but it is not mandatory. Most A team members do not attend practices due to other commitments, although at other schools the practice schedule is more rigorous.
“I rarely attend practices, mostly because of other conflicting engagements. Some teams are really intense about academic team. R.E. Lee practices daily and their coach makes them run laps for each question they answer incorrectly. That's just too intense--we're all about enjoying ourselves and being obnoxious,” Reynolds said.
The academic team’s competitions are held every Monday from now until November.
