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2009 Academic Games

March 6-8, DoDDS-E high school teams will compete in the two-day Academic Games tournament. The competition is patterned after the "College Brain Bowl." Questions reflect a broad high school curriculum to include the subjects of math, science, social studies, history, culture, language arts, and literature. A team is composed of a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and one alternate from any grade.

The Heidelberg High School defending championship team from 2008 will have three returning members on this year's team. The top seeded teams of Ramstein high school, AFNORTH high school, and Ankara high school will have returning members to lead their teams in the Thursday seedings.

About the Games

Academic Games is a "brain bowl" type competition held yearly for all high schools in DoDDS-Europe. Each high school may send one team to the competition. Each team is composed of a maximum of five members: one senior, one junior, one sophomore, one freshman, and one alternate who may be a 9th, 10th, 11th or 12th grader. Only four team members play in a game at any one time.

How It's Done

The first day of competition is "pool play". The top scoring teams from the previous year will "lead" a pool. First place "leads" pool #1, second place "leads" Pool #2, third place "leads" Pool 3, etc. Each pool will have only one seeded team. All other teams will be placed into pools by blind draw. (The number of pools will vary from year to year depending upon the number of schools participating but only eight teams will advance to double-elimination play.) In pool play, pool points will be awarded as follows: win=2 points, tie=1 point, loss=0 points.

The second day of competition is "double elimination play". All eight team continue playing until they loss two games. Plaques are awarded to the type three teams. Also two outstanding individual players are selected.

Questions used in competition are of two types toss-ups worth 10 points and bonus worth 5 points. Bonus questions are randomly attached to some of the toss-up questions. Bonus questions may or may not have any connection to the toss-up questions.

Questions reflect a broad high school curriculum to include such subjects as math, science, social studies, history, culture, language arts and literature.

Parents may contact their local high schools to obtain the name of the Academic Games Coach.

SY 07-08 Winning Teams