Hawken MS and US Teams Win State Academic Challenge Tournament

On February 6, 2010, Hawken hosted the first annual State Academic Challenge Tournament for Middle School in conjunction with a State Tournament for High School. Despite the blizzard that closed roads around the state and kept some teams from attending, fourteen teams from various schools were able to compete. After hours of matches, both Hawken Upper School and Hawken Middle School teams advanced to the finals. The end results showed the strengths of the Hawken Academic Challenge program. In the High School division, Hawken B team and University School were evenly matched all day and stayed so through the end where they tied for 2nd Place in State. Hawken A team (US) was undefeated for the day and easily won 1st Place in State. With the tie, there was no 3rd place awarded. There were even more teams competing in the Middle School division, where Hawken fielded three teams of enthusiastic students. In the end, Hawken A team led by captain Alex Kaufman was 1st in State, Hawken B team was in 2nd place, and Hawken C team was in 3rd place! With the win, the students earned the right to compete in a weekly online National tournament called Quiznet. On February 16, during the first Quiznet challenge these students have ever attempted, Hawken came in 4th in the Nation and they look forward to continuing through the next few weeks. In addition, Hawken Middle School teams will be competing in the CMSAC (Cleveland Middle School Academic Challenge) League tournament on April 17. This League was formed and is run by Hawken Alumni Alec Lai - who started our Middle School program two years ago and has taken them to the National level. The students who competed at the Middle School level are: Team A: Alex Kaufman (captain), Shang-Shang Chen, Jack Crowley, Michael Holstein, Sindhura Vallabhaneni, Jack Weisman, Marty Zhu; Team B: Max Schachere (captain), Suama Du, Isaac Jacobson, Derrick Liu, Aman Nair, Dennis Wu; Team C: Emma Ritz (captain), Ozan Aktay, Stephen Bradley, Dalya Oprian, Rachelle Magaram, Matthew Zhu.