G-AMS Quiz Team gives students a chance to show off their brain power

April 04, 2012|By ROXANN MILLER | roxann.miller@herald-mail.com

By Roxann Miller, Staff Writer

GREENCASTLE, Pa. — A new team at Greencastle-Antrim Middle School is giving students a chance to flex their academic muscles.

Middle School language arts teacher Raymond Mowery formed the school’s first quiz bowl team this year to give sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students a chance to show off their brain power and be part of a team.

“My goal when I designed the team was to give a group of kids a different opportunity to compete,” Mowery said. “Kids that weren’t necessarily on any teams or after-school sports (I wanted to) give them a chance to compete in a different way.”

“I like to be challenged, and this is really challenging,” said team member Jacob DeCarli, a sixth-grader, who has two more years to compete.

In February, Mowery signed the team up to compete in the 20th annual Middle School Quiz Bowl held at Lamberton Middle School in Carlisle, Pa.

Mowery said the team practiced every Thursday for an hour focusing on a variety of topics including history, math, literature and geography.

About 20 teams competed, with Greencastle winning one of its four matches.

Even though Greencastle didn’t win the tournament, Mowery still considers it a victory for the new team.

“We were the only team there that had never participated in this tournament before,” Mowery said. “I kind of likened it to an expansion team in sports. We had a rookie coach full of rookie players who were just happy to be out there competing in the big time with the big boys.”

Three other quiz bowl players, eighth-graders Cole Eberly, John Huynh and Navjit Singh, will be advancing to Greencastle-Antrim High School next year.

Currently, there isn’t a quiz bowl team at the high school, but the three quiz bowl teammates hope to change that next year.

“If we don’t have a quiz bowl team in the high school it will be like we took a step down,” John said.

John doesn’t play interscholastic sports and said he thrives on competing academically.

“This is a way for John to be part of a team and compete against other schools,” said Mowery, noting that he'd like to build on the quiz bowl idea.

“I’d like to see other area schools form quiz bowl teams so we can have more local competitions,” Mowery said. “I think every school has those groups of kids that want to compete, but don’t want to compete in soccer or football.”

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