Shawn Nowlin
shawn.nowlin@ourvalley.org
From left to right, junior Cecilia Fraticelli, senior Churchill Wilkinson, team sponsor Mike Florek, senior Noah Been and senior Rafid Mirza.
The academic team at Glenvar High School continues to have a great season. This weekend, they will be participating in the Virginia High School League State Championships, or Scholastic Bowl, in Williamsburg, Virginia. To qualify, the team had to win two contests this year: a Sub-Region tournament on January 24 and a Region tournament on February 12.
Mike Florek, a Glenvar High Physics Teacher, is also the coach of the academic team. In addition to making sure that his players are adequately registered, Florek digs up question packets for every competition to use during weekly practices too.
The Scholastic Bowl is a general knowledge quiz competition. Matches consist of three rounds of questions, and correct answers are worth 10 points. The first round is 15 toss-up questions. The second round is 20 directed questions – 10 per team. The third round is 15 additional toss-up questions. Incorrect responses are worth zero points. If a team buzzes in before the question has been completely posed, it is a penalty of five points.
“Our team is super small, but we have had parents come to support their children and their classmates are excited,” Florek said. “The Scholastic Bowl doesn’t have a particular theme. When the questions are released to the public later, we might notice patterns in certain genres of questions being asked more often, but the topics are typically all over the place.”
Four students are on the Glenvar High Academic Team: Noah Benn, Cecilia Fraticelli, Rafid Mirza and Churchill Wilkinson. Fraticelli is a junior, and the other three are seniors. While Florek wants to win the championship this weekend, what’s more important to him is how his students represent the Glenvar community.
“Above everything, I am most proud of their work ethic. They practice and study on their own time and have split up the categories among themselves. I am so proud of how composed they are in tight matches,” Florek said.
