Brains Over Brawn: The STEM Academic Team

April 3, 2019

Claire Dougherty

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Throughout this school year, you may have seen some astute-looking kids walking around in the school hallways decked out in either sharp khaki or navy blue sweaters. You may be wondering, who are these nerds? Let me tell you, we are the academic team of the STEM Academy.

Even though we are one of the only teams at STEM has that is not divided between West and East, very few people know about us. However, our varsity team is fourth in the county and our junior varsity is showing some serious promise.

We have a match once a month from September through January, and then semi-finals come in February and March. The term “match” can be confusing because we are not actively competing against one specific team. We are instead mentally sparring against two other teams with three rounds of buzzing questions that alternate with three rounds of fanfare (in which the answers to the questions are written on whiteboards). Only four members of a team can play at a time, and players are lucky if they can play two rounds in a match. Not being played makes the stress go down, but subsequently, it goes up if you know the answer to a question but you’re in the audience. One of the worst feelings is knowing the exact answer to a question but your team members up on the stage quite obviously do not.

The fact that this is a team effort might seem confusing to an outsider, but we actually do work together at matches. A discussion is allowed until someone buzzes in, and one of the most important things is discussing a potential answer if not everyone on the team concurs. Another factor that is important to consider is the players’ specialties. I am personally a literature player, but I can also grab American history or some animal science questions. Knowing each players’ specific focus is essential to smart buzzing. When a question is being read out, it would be foolish to buzz early if you only know a bare outline of an answer. If you answer too hastily on a question that someone else on your team would have known, that would be costly for the team. A wrong answer locks the rest of the team out of answering the question. Due to this stipulation, I make sure to stay away from answering political, scientific, or fine arts questions because I know that another player on my team will get it.

Many kids ask me how I study for the academic team and whether or not we get the questions or topics beforehand. Sadly, we do not. The questions are always a surprise! At our academic team practices, we do an hour of buzzing on old question packets and then independent study. It is surprising to discover that there are actually a couple of topics that come up a lot in these packets that are not otherwise considered common knowledge (looking at you Isabel Allende and Brancusi). Practicing recognizing topics based on a few keywords helps us to be sharper during the actual competitions. Independent study is used for practice in a specific area. I personally use the literature category on the website, Sporcle, to help me memorize authors, titles, characters, and main events. I could tell you basic outlines of novels I’ve never even read such as Madame Bovary or A Farewell to Arms. Practice is really key to this type of competition.

Academic team is really unlike any other team at STEM. For starters, we’re basically the only team that is exclusively STEM. Additionally, we flex our minds instead of our physical skills during competitions. It is an extremely fun team to be on and it does not hurt that the uniform makes you look extra studious. If you’re looking for a team where the only muscle you flex is your brain, then maybe come try out next year!

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If you would like to join Academic Team, please contact Academic Team's advisor for more information!

Advisor: Mrs. Pugliese (kpugliese@dasd.org)