Throughout the school year, members of Freedom’s Academic Games Leagues of America (AGLOA), more commonly known as the “Academic Games” team, have played in several competitions. Those competitions ultimately led to their annual national competition. AGLOA is a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to evolving excellence in students who choose to join.
Regularly, one of the competitions prior to nationals allows students to display their greatest abilities and the scores determine who qualifies for the national AGLOA competition. Typically, one student’s score determines the cutoff score, which determines what students qualify to move on to the next step. Those who achieve qualifying scores are able to compete in nationals.
During competitions, players answer questions in various categories, such as equations, presidents, themes and current events. The main goal is to out-think members from other schools. All competitions are formatted differently depending on the category. For example, most of the competitions begin with a shorter first round and then have a longer second round. In the current events category, nationalists get into groups of three and listen to a category title, then a wager is set based on the students’ confidence in getting the answer in that category correct. If they answer the question correctly, the amount of points they wager is the amount they earn. In the second round, the process is the same, except those who answer the question incorrectly lose half of the points from their wager.
Ms. Jennifer Glover, a staff member in the middle school, has been in charge of helping members of Academic Games for years. Team members meet throughout the year to study their topics and practice in Glover’s room under her advisory.
On Friday, April 19, the nationalists, accompanied by Glover, traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, where the competition was held. During the first day, some of the students went through an optional orientation with their families. The competitions began on Saturday, April 20, and continued on Sunday. The following Monday, they had another competition, as well as an award ceremony. Most traveled back home on Tuesday, April 23.
The nationalists who competed in the games were sophomores Calla Reynolds, Colton Blank and Noah Brandon, freshmen Olivia VanDeCar and Nicholas Metzger and students from the middle school. Reynolds and Brandon also attended the competition last year in Orlando, Florida.
“My biggest takeaway from this competition I would say would be that studying in-between the local competitions and nationals is actually important and makes a difference,” VanDeCar, who competed in theme and current events, said. “I will use this when I compete in future years.”