By Jill Spencer
Members of the Penn High School Academic Super Bowl Social Studies team proudly display their first-place ribbons, earned at the Mishawaka Regional meet on Tuesday, April 19, 2016. Students Emily Schlundt, Celine Wang, Keegan Palonis and Luke Jerzak are pictured here with Coach Pete DeKever.
For the Social Studies team, this was the 22nd regional championship since 1992. Penn Social Studies has gone on to win 12 state championships.
Penn High is one of three local high schools sending teams to the 30th annual Academic Super Bowl (ASB) state finals. The competition will take place May 7 at Purdue University-West Lafayette’s Loeb Auditorium.
In addition to the Social Studies team, the Kingsmen Math and English teams also qualified for the state finals.
Qualifying from NorthWood High School are teams competing in Social Studies, Science and Math, and representing Northridge High School are the school's Fine Arts, Math and and Interdisciplinary teams.
Other teams qualifying for the state finals from area schools include Concord in Fine Arts, Jimtown in Social Studies and Interdisciplinary, LaPorte in Interdisciplinary, Elkhart Christian in Fine Arts and LaPorte LaLumiere in English and Wawasee in Social Studies.
Academic Super Bowl consists of 25 multiple choice questions per round with three students from each school competing at one time. The team with the highest score becomes the state champion.
This year's ASB topic is "Hoosier Heritage" celebrating Indiana's 200th anniversary of statehood.
Submitted by Joe DeKever
