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First year out, Southwest High School qualifies for state in academic decathlon
BARTLEY, Neb. — The Southwest Academic Decathlon team recently competed in and won regional competition in Lexington Jan. 20.
The students also won the "Super Quiz" section, outscoring all teams, including teams from larger school divisions. This years’s theme was “Africa.”
The team qualified for the state competition because of winning the regional and also because the team is the “Rookie Team” for Nebraska Decathlon.
This is the first year Southwest High School has competed, said Peg Rice, one of the coaches at Southwest. Rice said she was pleasantly surprised when the club first started this year.
“It was one of those things, where we were hoping enough kids would sign up and we ended up with 16,” Rice said.
State competition is Friday and Saturday, Feb. 16 and 17, at Bellevue University in Bellevue, Neb.
Team members are:
SENIORS: Ashley Kragelund, Stevie Wadle, Natalie Shald
JUNIORS: Kailee Miller, Walter Fitzsimmons, Suzanne Roggenkamp
SOPHOMORES: Kailey Wilcox, Austin Adam, Jadyn Brooks
FRESHMAN: Justin Brush, Julia Holdcroft
Coaches are Peg Rice, Caleb Chesterman and Carol Kelley.
The Academic Decathlon is an educational growth program for high school students. The program requires participating students to develop an understanding of a specific curriculum and take tests in the areas of Art, Economics, Language & Literature, Math, Music, Science, and Social Science. In addition, at the State Meet, they must write an essay, present both a planned and impromptu speech and complete an interview.
The unique feature of this program is a participating school may have students from all grade levels working together to earn a school score. In addition, it is designed to include students from all achievement levels. Thus, students must fit into the following categories:
* At least two students must have an “A” grade level average (3.75 – 4.00 GPA) on academic courses in the last two years.
* At least two students must have a “B” grade level average (3.00 – 3.74 GPA) on academic courses in the last two years.
* At least two students have have a “C or Below” grade level average (0.00 – 2.99 GPA) on academic courses in the last two years.
Although all students take the same tests, the students in a given level are competing with only other students at that same level — ie. the “A” grade level students compete with other “A” grade level students for medals in each of the ten events.
During the regional, four girls took three tests in Cambridge because of RPAC basketball, so they were Southwest’s Alternates that day (along with Justin Brush, who tested in Lexington).
ALTERNATE CATEGORY:
HONORS:
Susan Roggenkamp 1st Math
Ashley Kragelund 2nd Math
SCHOLASTIC:
Stevie Wadle 2nd Math, 3rd Art, 3rd Literature
Jadyn Brooks 2nd Math, 2nd Literature
VARSITY:
Justin Brush Placed in top 3 in each category, Math, Art, Literature, Music, Economics, and Science
REGULAR CATEGORY: (and competed in the Super Quiz)
HONORS:
Austin Adam: 1st Economics, 3rd Literature, 3rd Art
Kailee Miller: 1st Math, 2nd Economics, 3rd Science, 3rd Literature (and top scorer over all from the team).
SCHOLASTIC:
Julia Holdcroft: 1st Literature, 2nd Science, 3rd Art, 3rd Economics
Kailey Wilcox: 2nd Literature, 2nd Music
VARSITY:
Walter Fitzsimmons: 1st Economics, 2nd Science
Natalie Shald: 2nd Science
The schools that qualified in the Large and Medium School category are Creighton Prep, Gretna, Gross Catholic, Omaha Burke, Pius X and Skutt Catholic.
The schools in the Small and Very Small category are Ashland-Greenwood, Brownell Talbot, Loup City (also from our regional), Lourdes Central, Mead, Mount Michael, Southwest, and Wahoo.