ACADECA on its way to nationals

On Feb. 23, Samo’s Academic Competition (ACADECA) won the Ocean Bowl competition at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, beating Bear Arcadia to move on to the National Competition in Washington D.C. Samo has previously placed first in 2017 and third in 2016 and 2011 in the National Competition.  The team members were incredibly happy with their performance in the Ocean Bowl and are excited to go to Nationals, especially Ireland Neville (’20), who has been competing for almost three years with the Samo team. “I feel great about our Ocean Bowl win. It is a very competitive activity and the fact that all our practice materialized into a ‘dub’ and a trip to Washington D.C. is really exciting,” Neville said.  ACADECA is a competition where school organized teams compete in academic based competitions that test their ability to solve complex problems and their ability to memorize facts. The teams participate in competitions that include multiple choice events, performance events and essay events. Each high school can enter a team into the competitions, and they are scored on individual and team success. This year's team participated in the Ocean Science Bowl Competition, which focused on the environment. At nationals, the team will have to complete a scientific expert briefing (SEB), on top of participating in the buzzer rounds. This entails all five members of the Samo team taking the perspective of either an NGO, federal agency, someone in industry or an environmental scientist. This year’s issue is in regards to the Arctic Ocean and all five members will have to write a report about how they feel about the issue and attempt to fix the issue in front of a panel of judges. Based on the performance in this round, the team will be seeded for the knockout stages, where the competitions begin.  They are headed to Washington D.C. with great confidence, but are also conscious of the things they will need to do better in order to win. Ingo Giada has been the ACADECA supervisor/coach for 20 years; since 2008 he has placed top 10 in the National Competition nine times. He was thrilled with the team’s performance in regionals, and is really happy with the team’s chemistry going into Nationals. “We had a team with several kids who haven’t competed before, but they rallied together for the win, I was very impressed. We have been studying hard, practicing after school for several hours, I think we have potential to win the whole thing. [The team chemistry] is some of the best we have ever had, they are great friends and they have a great time practicing, [nationals] should be really fun.” The team will go to Nationals in Washington D.C. from April 11 to April 14 competing at the Liaison Capitol Hill and Keck Center of the National Academy of Sciences against 24 other regional winning teams from all over the country. Although it will be a tough endeavour, Samo is ready for the challenge.