“The most terrifying moment was when our score was messed up during the Super Quiz Relay. Essentially, we had the question correct, but the computer counted it wrong,” said senior co-captain Wending Zhu. “Thus we were down a point out of 30 total, so this put a lot more pressure on us for the remainder of the Relay. We ended up winning by one point.”
And those points add up. Oakwood earned 44,874 of them in Division III, overcoming high schools in Hawaii and Pennsylvania. In addition to Zhu, team members Will Fitz, Will Powers, Tim McCarthy, Graham Garner, Grant Pitarys, Emmaline Bennett and Jacob Hunt earned a total of 39 medals in individual and team categories. They successfully navigated prepared/extemporaneous speeches, onsite essay, interview, and written tests in seven subjects. The main theme of the contest was World War I.
In the Honors category, Zhu placed second and was named most valuable team member, Bennett placed first and was overall highest team scorer, Powers received third place. For the Scholastic category, co-captain Fitz earned a gold medal. The gold winner in the Varsity category went to McCarthy, who was the team’s biggest medal winner, placing in eight assessment areas.
“Winning national titles three years in a row is no easy feat. The students have to commit to the success of the program and to the time commitment involved with winning,” said OHS AcaDec coach and English teacher Lori Morri. “Since the topic changes yearly, students have to devote hundreds of hours every year to learning the new curriculum and preparing for the subjectives of speech and interview.
The students feel tremendous pressure and responsibility to continue to build this legacy of a winning program, especially now that Oakwood is such a national presence.”
Next year, students on the team will become experts on “New Alternatives in Energy.”
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