By Amelia McDonough
Ponte Vedra’s Academic WorldQuest team, “The River Sharks” are competing at the National Academic WorldQuest on Apr. 29and 30. This competition is sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville. The team is comprised of: seniors Roberto Lachner and Grace Nuri, junior Ella McCarthy, and sophomore Ben Black. They will be traveling to Washington D.C to compete for the title.
They must answer 36 questions total in 6 different categories about world affairs and current events. The regional competition was held on Feb. 10 in Jacksonville. Two stand out questions from their regional competition were “What year did Vietnam and the US normalize relations?” and “What country is known as the buckle?” The team correctly answered “1995” and “Kazakhstan” to win the regional competition and advance to nationals. Although Ponte Vedra’s River Sharks took home first, the competition did hand out other awards to other schools. For example, another award was the “Best Team Name” award, which was given to Wolfson High School with the name “Taipei Personality”. Nease High School took home 2nd place and Stanton College Preparatory School took 3rd place.
Team member Ben Black says in order to prepare for the competition the team reviewed the study guide provided and he says “Our victory was the product of multiple years of learning about currents events through our prior interests”. “My favorite part about the experience was winning” says Ben. Team member Roberto Lachner says, “It was cool to see people come together and be excited about world affairs considering it is not something people are usually interested in.”
