by Rachel Rice

“I never would have predicted that we would be second seed going into the final round!” declares pleasantly surprised English Teacher and Advisor of Oakdale High School’s very own competitive Academic Team Ms. Nicole Moravy.

The team has boasted six wins throughout this past season in addition to progressing further in the championship than any prior OHS team. The team wrestled competitors from all over the county in seven competitions, making the victory to defeat ratio present appealingly. At these competitions the team has resolved all manners of trivia in a timely manner with categories including unpredictable matter such as landforms, broadway musicals, and British poets.

“We wanted to be in the playoffs and improve from last year,” stated Junior and team member Andrew Murray, continuing on to add “we definitely accomplished that goal”.

Accomplish that goal they certainly did. Not only did they best the previous seasons win to loss record of 0 wins to an unknown quantity of losses, but they also entered the championship in the second seed (as mentioned in the beginning of the article). What does that mean?

“(It’s) kind of like a March Madness bracket,” Ms. Moravy elaborates, further explaining that this means they were predicted to finish out as the runner-up. Unfortunately this did not occur, but the team has still made strides beyond what either advisor had aspired for them.

“Our goal was to come in eighth,” reported the team’s other advisor, OHS Mathematics Teacher Ms. Anne Truitt. If Oakdale’s inadvertent triumph turned out as such a pleasant twist of events, one could only imagine what would happen if next season they went in with the intention of dominating competition.

“The most exciting thing to me was to see the people who were on the team in the past years because they were really happy,” reminisced Senior team member Alexandra Servey when asked of her favorite memory of this past season.

All of the team members interviewed shared the sentiment that joining the Academic Team would be enriching to any prospective student in future seasons.