The Academic Games team officially started practicing at the end of September for their first county competition November 14.

The entire year the Academic Games team is studying and playing to qualify for the national tournament in Atlanta, Georgia in mid-April.

To fully qualify to attend the national tournament gamers have to qualify at the county level in two events.

This year the team also has to extensively fundraise for the national tournament because of budget constraints. The team originally was getting no help from the school with the costs of the trip, but through parent help at school board meetings the academic games team was able to get the registration fees for all students covered. The fees vary per year but are usually around $200.

Every year the first competition at the county level is Propaganda. Propaganda is a quiz-style game where questions are read and gamers have to guess what propaganda technique is being used. At the high school level, some questions also involve photos and others that have more than one technique being used.

The November 14 tournament was held in the Geneva College fieldhouse in Beaver Falls.

As usual, Beaver Area was the county powerhouse and eight Beaver Area students qualified to move on from the county competition to attend the national tournament.

In Academic Games, students are separated into different divisions based on their grade level. The high school level divisions are the junior division (freshman and sophomores) as well as the senior division (juniors and seniors).

In the junior division freshmen Vivian German, Anna Mateer, and Cara Schrebeis as well as sophomore Cora Rodgers qualified for the national tournament.

In the senior division, only eight people qualified for the national tournament and Beaver Area students took half of the spots.

Juniors Grace Vinopal, Julian Noll, Hailey Ziegler, and Ava Sutter all qualified in Propaganda.

There was also some controversy at this propaganda tournament because there were three students from various schools caught faking scores.

Noll explained that “Academic Games truly enriches the well rounding of me as a student. I am very glad that I qualified. I am very excited for Nationals this year. I look forward to competing at our next events. Nerd life or no life.”

With an extremely quick turnaround, the team got ready for their next tournament: Equations. Equations is played with wooden cubes that have numbers and symbols on all six sides. The game can be compared to a math version of Scrabble or Boggle.

The Equations tournament was November 28 at the CCBC Dome.

November 28 was the Tuesday that Beaver Area came back to school from Thanksgiving break, so many high school students decided not to go.

The tournament fell on an unfortunate date that made the turnout much less than usual, and only three high school gamers represented the Bobcats in the math game

Senior Gracie Turyan and Noll qualified in equations for the national tournament. The Equations tournament officially made Noll the first high schooler to qualify for Nationals this year.

The next tournament will be January 25 at Blackhawk Middle School. The gamers will take on World Events which are both Current Events and Theme rolled into one day. The theme for this year is The History of Rock and Roll.