Though not the biggest student organization or seemingly the most fun, the academic games students have been working hard for their members to qualify in two of the six games to hopefully travel to Knoxville, Tennessee for the national tournament.

November 19 the academic games team traveled to Geneva College in Beaver Falls for the annual county level propaganda tournament.

During propaganda, students have four rounds, with one section per round, where a reader reads nine examples of propaganda and the players have to identify what type of prop it is.

After an anxious wait, junior division (ninth and tenth grade) members Grace Vinopal,

Ava Sutter, Ian McCarty-Cogis, Julian Noll, and Hailey Ziegler all qualified for the national tournament with the cutoff score being 68 points.

Ziegler placed second in Beaver County.

For the senior division (eleventh and twelfth grade) Madison Flaugh, Reed Garrett, Audrey Maize, and Olivia Wooley qualified for the Knoxville tournament.

Flaugh received the first-place prize out of Beaver county.

The academic games team meets once a week and most of the games require outside studying.

Beaver Area competes in six of the eight games: Propaganda, Linguishtiks, Equations, Presidents, Current Events, and Theme which changes every year.

This year's chosen theme is “the gilded age.”

Beaver Area’s Academic games program is sponsored by Mrs. Kelly McNeil.

For many of the high school team members this is over their fifth year in the program, so many of the games have become second nature.

As well as propaganda, the team competed at the Linguishtiks [Ling] tournament December 16 in which the cutoff score is always 16 points or a tie for first place three out of the three rounds.

In the junior division sophomores Gracie Turyan and Madelyn Hamilton as well as freshman Ziegler, Noll, Sutter, and Vinopal all qualified for the national tournament.

“I love Linguishtiks. I’ve qualified [for nationals] every year I’ve competed,” said Hamilton.

In the senior division juniors Maize, Brandon Osborne, Robert Cestra, and Garrett all qualified as did Flaugh.

For the members who have not qualified in both of the events played so far they have up to four more chances to earn a spot in Knoxville.

The team will travel to Tennessee to compete April 22–25.