Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Academic Competition Season Pivots To Online Games
FARMINGTON — This year’s Academic Competition in Education season for area high schools has moved into the virtual realm because of covid-19.
The same five Northwest Arkansas high schools have returned from the 2019-20 season to compete again this year: Farmington, Prairie Grove, Gravette, Bentonville High and Bentonville West.
But instead of the teams competing against each other in- person, they are all staying at their home schools and competing virtually through the Zoom app.
Dustin Seaton, gifted and talented specialist for Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative, serves as moderator for the competitions.
Seaton said school officials initially did not think they would be able to co- mingle students from different schools for the ACE matches and began looking at options.
“It was either cancel all together, which is not fair to those students, or come up with a modified version,” Seaton said. “This was our best modified version.”
In addition, a lot of seniors are returning this year, and he said the schools wanted those students to have a good end-of-year season for “some sense of normalcy.”
Seaton said he’s thankful all the school districts are making the academic competition work this year.
The season started Jan. 14, and all schools are playing each other to give them four games for the season.
In past years, schools accumulated points throughout the season, and the teams with the most points advanced to an end-of-season tournament, with two semifinal games and then a championship game.
Farmington’s ACE team has won the championship game for the past three years.
This year, there will not be a head-to-head tournament. The 2020-21 champion will be determined by points accumulated throughout the season.
After two series through Jan. 26, Farmington has 93 points for two games, Prairie Grove has 69 points for two games and Gravette has 63 points for two games. Bentonville and Bentonville West have only played one game and each scored 49 points in those games.
Dates for the rest of the season are Feb. 2, Feb. 18 and March 3.
Farmington and Prairie Grove competed against each other last week, and Farmington scored 61 points to Prairie Grove’s 24 points. Farmington’s ACE team was in the high school’s computer lab for the game. Prairie Grove players competed from their high school library.
Clayton Williams, Farmington’s ACE facilitator, said the team increased its game score from 32 for the first match to 61 for last week’s match against Prairie Grove.
“Obviously, we did not play to our potential in the first match so we talked about focus, discipline and studying and the standard of expectation for our team,” Williams said by email. “They work hard and that first match was not a good representation of how hard they worked.”
He added, “I am really proud of how our team bounced back and took on the challenge to play to their potential … Similar to golf, we have to go out and play our game to the level we know that we can play and cannot worry about how the other teams do. We have to assume that they will always be playing their best every game.”
Donna Mitchell, Prairie Grove’s sponsor, said her team was excited to be able to play this year, even if the digital format has brought changes.
“Mr. Seaton always goes above and beyond to provide opportunities for students to participate in academic enriching activities, and we are appreciative to him and all those involved for making this opportunity possible,” Mitchell said.
The virtual matches have one advantage, Mitchell said, in that students do not have to miss as much class because they are not traveling to other schools for competitions. That’s been beneficial “due to the fact that covid-19 has brought enough interruptions to the learning process,” she added.
An ACE match has two halves, with the first half focusing more on language arts questions and the second half leaning more toward math and science questions.
Teams are given 15 seconds and four tries to answer a question. A team receives four points if the first answer is correct, then three points, two points or one point. After 15 seconds, the opponent has the opportunity to give a correct answer and steal a point.
Seaton said one of the biggest issues with virtual competitions is the lag time for responses, so he’s been a little lenient with the timer.
Another change this year is that the questions are on a Power Point presentation so team members can read the question, as well as listen to him read the question.
“We may continue to do this in the future,” Seaton said.