BY ALLIE CLAHERTY
Staff Writer
The high school was the site of the first-ever America Bowl in early March, where elementary and middle school students tested their knowledge on a variety of topics related to the United States.
About 300 students from 26 school districts participated. Gifted students from the high school helped as scorers and guides.
The categories were presidents, famous people, maps, Pittsburgh, U.S. states, and U.S. government. The high school students who helped out said the questions ran the gamut from simple to pretty challenging.
“Some of the questions were really difficult, but some of them were really easy. One of the easier ones was, `Name two of Elvis Presley’s songs,’ ”senior Alex Knueven said.
Senior Tori Scott said the harder questions included items like, “Here is a group of presidents’ birthdays. Put them in order.”
Students answered questions solo and in groups. They had five minutes to answer each group question and 90 seconds to answer each individual question.
Harrison Middle School gifted teacher Daniel Shaner came up with the idea for America Bowl. High school gifted coordinator Debbie Reynolds said that she, Shaner, and high school teachers Jared Hoffman and Brad Schulte organized the event.
Shaner said, “We were at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit Science Bowl last year and two of the teachers that we were talking to agreed that we have the History Bowl that focuses on Pittsburgh history, but there is nothing about American history.”
Shaner and his colleagues then went to Baldwin administration and proposed that the high school host America Bowl. Administrators agreed, “and then everything just fell into the place,” Shaner said.
Dominic Woods, a Wilkinsburg history teacher who escorted a team from his district to the America Bowl, was impressed with the event. “It was well planned and very organized,” Woods said.
Brianna Phillips, a Harrison Middle School seventh-grader, said it was a tough event and took a lot more knowledge than she had thought it would.
“The group questions were very hard,” Harrison seventh-grader Brianna Pittman said. “But I think we did exceptionally well on most of them.”
Among the elementary schools, Brentwood took first place; Harrison Middle School was second, and Montour came in third. At the middle-school level, Elizabeth Forward won, followed by North Allegheny and then St. Philip School.
