Five days ago, eighteen East Noble students joined forces and put their knowledge to the test at the NE8 Academic Super Bowl Conference meet. The team, which generally enjoys a fun and moderately successful competition season, stole the show with a solid 100-point final score out of a possible 150. East Noble hosted the event for the first time in several years, and its students certainly did not disappoint.

“I’m really proud of all of our teams tonight!” said junior Sage Halsey, a member of the Bowl’s Fine Arts team, English team, and Interdisciplinary team. “We all did incredible and placed well.”

The Academic Super Bowl consists of six teams: English, Science, Fine Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Interdisciplinary—a combination of the previous five. Each team sits at a table and answers 25 multiple choice questions as they are read, one at a time, by the emcee.

As Halsey said, the six teams all performed exceedingly well in their respective rounds:

English: 16/25 – First
Science: 19/25 – Second
Fine Arts: 20/25 – First
Social Studies: 14/25 – Third
Mathematics: 21/25 – First
Interdisciplinary: 15/25 – Second

Four other schools were in attendance as well. DeKalb, which tends to beat East Noble year after year, came in second with a final score of 94 while Columbia City came in third with 88, Leo in fourth with 80, and New Haven in fifth with 58.

“Oh, yeah! We beat DeKalb,” said Zarna Patel, a sophomore on the Math and Science teams. “This is amazing.”

This was the Bowl’s second regular competition of the year. The first, which was hosted by Hamilton on February 29, was only a practice, but they will return to Hamilton on April 19 for their final regular competition. This next one is crucial because it determines which individual teams will advance to the state competition at Purdue University in May. Only one team has qualified for state in the last decade—the Interdisciplinary team back in 2014—but the Bowl’s recent strong performance indicates that that may change soon.

“With a little more effort, these guys will make a run at qualifying for state!” said Mr. Hamlin, the coach of the Math team.

The students will continue to practice and prepare in the weeks ahead. Aside from its academic prowess, the group’s tight friendship might be one of its greatest strengths, and a victory like this one might have been just what these kids needed to finish their season out strong.

“I feel like I have won 1 million bucks!” said newcomer Emily Napier, a senior on the Fine Arts team. “It is awesome to see all the hard work pay off!”