Warren Harding Academic Team heads to state

By Denise Dick

Staff report

warren

The Warren G. Harding High School Academic Team defeated North Canton Hoover High School on Saturday to advance to the Ohio Academic Competition Championship Tournament.

The state tournament will be Saturday in Columbus. Harding representing the East Central Region, one of six regions throughout Ohio.

The East Central Region had its tournament in Steubenville over the weekend where 15 high school teams competed to advance to the state tournament. To compete in the East Central Regional Tournament, a team had to qualify at a local competition. Harding qualified by defeating 17 Trumbull County high-school teams in the 2010 Trumbull County High School Prep Bowl this past winter.

Other local teams that qualified to compete in the East Central Regional Tournament included Champion, Lowellville, Niles McKinley, Salem and Southeast high schools.

The purpose of the competition is to encourage higher-order thinking, recognize outstanding achievement and promote academic excellence among high school students. The tournament asked questions from curricular areas like science, literature, social studies, math and fine arts.

Harding’s Academic Team includes Michael Coates, Joseph Angelo, Allison Thirion, Sam Eartly, Korey Gall and Andrew Miller, all sophomores. Kim Hunter is the team’s adviser.

Harding’s team has also qualified for three national high school championship tournaments, including the NAQT High School National Championship Tournament to be held in Chicago on May 27-29, the NAC National Academic Championship to be held at Loyola University in New Orleans on May 28-29, and the 2010 PACE National Scholastics Championship to be held June 5-6 at George Mason University.

The difference between each tournament is the format and difficulty of the questions.