Four deaf high schoolers from the state of Nebraska went to the 2017 Regional Academic Bowl for students who are deaf and hard of hearing in Indianapolis, Indiana on February 25th.
One of those students Jack Samuelson is a sophomore at Hastings High. This was Samuelson’s first year on the academic bowl team and he loved everything about it.
“It was a really enlightening experience for me, I got to meet lots of new people and really bond with my team,” Samuelson said.
The Academic bowl team competed very well and advanced to nationals.
“At the regional tournament, we were tied with 3 other teams for the last place that got to go to finals,” educator for the deaf Cindy Koch said. “So we had to take a wild card test and the team with the highest score from that test would then advance to finals. It was a lot of pressure but we ended up with the highest score and advanced to finals,” Koch said.
There was a total of twenty teams in attendance at the 2017 Regional Academic Bowl.
“There were teams from as far as Hawaii and Canada at the academic bowl. Lots of the teams we were competing against have been established for many years and practice weekly, our team had only practiced once and performed just as well if not better than some of the others teams,” Koch said.
Samuelson felt nervous going into the tournament despite only having one practice under his belt.
“It was a little scary going into the competition with only having one practice but we all bonded really well making it easier for us to compete together,” Samuelson said.
The Academic Bowl is a sign only atmosphere, making it difficult for some team members to get everything.
“We worked a lot on their basic sign language on the plane ride to Illinois and while we had free time. They really improved their signing ability just in the 3 or 4 days we were there,” Koch said.
The team will compete on April 1st at Gallaudet University.
