On Saturday, Mar. 9, University High School’s Academic Team emerged victorious at the 2024 State Championship!
The Trailblazers returned to the state competition, marking the second time in the school’s history that they hosted the State Academic Team Tournament, following their victory at last year’s state tournament in March 2023.
For the 2023-24 season, the Trailblazers were White River Academic League (WRAL) North Division champions, WRAL regular season champions, WRAL tournament champions, and now Indiana State Champions. The team, coached by Dave Vesper and Jack Paganelli, has built a reputation over the past several years as a team to beat. The last 5 years record are:
- 2023-2024: 29 – 3 (including an NAQT tournament where we were 6-3 and ended 5 of 16 teams)
- 2022-2023: 28 – 0 (cumulative: 57 – 3)
- 2021-2022: 23 – 1 (cumulative: 80 – 3)
- 2020-2021: 7 – 0 (cumulative: 87 – 3)
- 2019-2020: 16 – 4 (cumulative: 103 – 7)
This year’s tournament was a 7 round round-robin. The team completed the tournament with a 7-0 finish, which solidified their WRAL undefeated season (16 – 0) with an impressive cumulative record of 28 wins and 3 losses.
Many teams qualified and were invited to the state tournament, which included teams from Brebeuf, Brownsburg, Center Grove, Franklin Central, Mississinewa, North Central, and Zionsville, in addition to University. Seniors Marie Coutant, Owen Murray, and Steven Zhang, and juniors Mikey Cardwell (team captain) and Lukas Fiur represented the Trailblazers.
The state tournament plays a similar game to what the team plays in the WRAL, but some changes applied. For instance, the point totals are different; in round 1, questions count for 5 or 10 points (instead of 2 points in WRAL), and in round 4, questions count for 15 or 20 points (instead of 3 points). Additionally, in this tournament, teams play with 4 players at a time instead of 5, as in the WRAL, so one team member sat out for each of the rounds.
In the first match, University faced the Brebeuf Braves. The Trailblazers started strong and ended round 1 with a 25-85 advantage. However, during the bonus round (round 2), Mikey Cardwell scored three of the four toss-up questions, with the Blazers sweeping one bonus question set. They ended round 2 up 115-110. The Blazers pulled ahead in the minute round (245-160), picking Etymology for their category! In the 4th (Stump the Experts) round, every Blazer scored, with their opponents getting no points, to end the match.
Final score: UHS 360, Brebeuf 160.
The second match was against Zionsville, a perennially tough foe for UHS. Scores were close for the first two rounds (45-35 and 90-70), with UHS pulling ahead 200-140 in the minute round. However, again in round 4, the Blazers showed their strength, outsourcing Zionsville 160-15.
Final score: UHS 360, Zionsville 155.
Match 3 was against Center Grove, who last year came within one question of defeating the Blazers in tournament play. This year it was not that close, with the Blazers starting ahead and maintaining that all four rounds. They ended with a third 360 score!
Final score: UHS 360, Center Grove 150.
Match 4 brought the Trailblazers against Brownsburg. In the WRAL tourney, Brownsburg tried a new tactic against us. They buzzed in early every time. At the WRAL tourney, that surprised and flustered us, creating our closest match of the year. Brownsburg tried that again, but we had prepared for the tactics and while our score was our lowest of the day, we won again. This was the third match where every UHS team member scored, a balanced effort.
Final score: UHS 290, Brownsburg 135.
Match 5 was against Mississawa from the Four Counties League. While the Blazers have often had slow starts after lunch, they started this match strong and did not let up. Once again, all Blazers scored.
Final score: UHS 375, Mississawa 90.
The final two matches were against the strongest teams in the tournament, Franklin Central and North Central.
Franklin Central was the #2 team in WRAL. While we started down 5-20 to the Flashes, we pulled ahead by the end of the first round and started there, continuing a strong performance.
Final score: UHS 305, Franklin Central 132.
This left us 6-0 going into the final round against North Central. The Panthers were 5-2 on the day, so if we beat them, we would win the tournament without final playoffs. This match was tough. We ended round one 55-45, bouncing back and forth over the lead. However, during the bonus round, the Panthers pulled ahead 70-110. In the early days of our competition, we learned that teams win or lose in the bonus round. The minute round helps, but the scores there are rarely wide. While we have done very well in the expert rounds, the questions plus bonus questions format means there are up to 40 points on each question. So, being down by 40 coming out of the bonus round was not a good place!
As it turned out, the Panthers had one of the worst minute rounds we have ever seen, getting just 3 questions right in two lists, while we got 13. That put us up 200-140. We then, as we had before, showed our strength in the expert round, finishing 375-185.
The win marks the third time in school history that UHS has won the state championship and the second year in a row. The Blazer average score was 345. The next highest team average was 244, over one hundred points lower. The team ended another season with a dominating performance.
Well done, Blazers!