The Habersham County Academic Bowl teams are racking up wins with an impressive season, competing in-person for the first time in over a year. They may not be the Raiders that initially come to mind when you think about the Habersham Schools competitive teams, but the academic bowl has been taking names since their comeback two years ago.
While academic bowl has long existed at Habersham Central High School, over the past two years, faculty sponsors Hannah Blalock, Preston Kitchings, Caroline McFarlin and Kathy Miller have helped the academic bowl grow to a new level long-time teachers haven’t seen before.
The academic bowl is divided into two teams, the Habersham County Junior Varsity Academic Bowl, comprised of students from the Habersham County Ninth Grade Academy and HCHS sophomores, and the Habersham County Varsity Academic Bowl, made up of HCHS juniors and seniors.
So far in the season, the JV team remains undefeated, and varsity holds two wins and one loss. Last year, the JV team scored enough wins to compete at the national level.
“Knowing that every one of these students [is] intelligent— it’s nice to have all our strengths come together, almost like a machine,” JV Academic Bowl Captain Elijah King says. “. . . Where there’s some weakness, other people have the strengths in order to make up for those.”
While competing against area schools and developing a game plan is part of the fun, it isn’t the only part the students love. The academic bowl students call themselves “nerds,” and while some of the students haven’t always felt like they belonged at HCHS, the academic bowl has given them a place to thrive.
“I always felt like I was an outsider,” Varisty Academic Bowl Secretary Jose Macias says. He says that while HCHS cares about academics, before joining academic bowl, he felt like the school didn’t appreciate their achievements like they did athletics. “Us nerds, as we call [ourselves,] we would never have an official team to come together and show our academics and face other schools in a way that athletics always [have].”
He says with the academic bowl, the team is able to show off their skills and the knowledge they’ve gained in the classroom, and also feel the school pride and friendly competition their athletic counterparts get to experience.
“We have a good football team here, but we also have good minds that work together to compete against other schools,” Macias says. “We can also be supported in a way that athletics has been perceived to be supported by the general [Habersham] population.”
The sense of pride and engaging in competition brings these students together as teammates, and the relationships they’ve built along the way have given them a greater sense of belonging.
“It’s [academic bowl] really supportive,” King says. “It just works with us all being in this group and in an environment where we all can do something well. It almost forges a stronger bond between the students.”
As they make friends in the club that support them in their academics and in their lives, members of both the JV and varsity teams share that the academic bowl community has been a valuable part of their high school experience.
“Overall academic bowl is an experience,” Macias says. “And for us nerds, it’s a way that we can bond and change our lives for the better.”
