Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Farmington Finishes Third In ACE Final
PRAIRIE GROVE — It was down to the last question to determine second and third place in the championship match for the 2014 Academic Competition in Education season, with $ 500 on the line for the team that came out ahead.
In the end, Lifeway Christian School of Centerton correctly answered the last question and finished in second place, winning $1,500 for the team.
Farmington High’s ACE team was third, taking home a $1,000 prize.
Bentonville went into the March 17 match as the number one seed and stayed that way, winning the championship and a $ 2,000 purse. The final score was Bentonville, 57 points, Lifeway with 44 points and Farmington with 43 points.
Sara Spillars, Farmington’s senior captain, said Farmington had a good season overall.
This is Spillars third year on the team and she has finished in all three places while on ACE.
Her first year, Farmington won the championship. Her junior year, Farmington came in second place and she ended her ACE career with a third-place finish.
“We had a lot of new people this year, a lot of sophomores and they all did really well,” said Spillars.
ACE is an academic competition involving area schools. For the 2014 season, 10 schools in northwest Arkansas competed against each other with the top seven high scoring schools earning a spot on the last day. Bentonville automatically received a bye to the championship match, held at Prairie Grove High School.
Farmington competed against Gravette and Shiloh Christian School in the first semi-final match and won it by only two points, scoring 50 points to Gravette’s 48 points and Shiloh’s 39 points.
Lifeway won the next match against Fayetteville and West Fork, and advanced to the championship match with Bentonville and Farmington.
“I was very proud of how our side one started off in the first match and how our team kept their composure when things didn’t go so well in the second half,” said Clayton Williams, ACE coach, by email. “We had some rulings go our way to put us in the finals for the 11th straight year.”
In the championship match, the score was close at the halfway mark. Bentonville had 25 points, Lifeway 23 and Farmington 22. Bentonville slowly pulled away during the second half while Farmington and Lifeway stayed fairly close.
The match ended in regulation with Bentonville 57, Lifeway 43 and Farmington 39.
However, the rules allow teams to challenge answers and two questions were replaced because of the challenges.
The score remained the same after the challenges but Farmington then challenged one of the challenge questions and the judges agreed with Farmington’s argument, giving Farmington four additional points and placing Farmington and Lifeway Christian in a tie for second place.
The ACE rules in the event of a tie call for a five-question playoff. The question was read and each team wrote its answer on a piece of paper which was handed to the judges.
A team scored one point for each correct answer.
Both teams missed the first three questions and both teams correctly answered the fourth question.
The decision came down to the fifth and final question: Lifeway had it right and Farmington missed it.
Williams said Farming- ton’s team represented the school well this year and “hopefully, we can build on this success next year.”
Prairie Grove, which missed making it to the final day by only one point, improved over the season. Prairie Grove scored 25 points its first match and 35 points its second match. For its third and final round, Prairie Grove won its match and scored a season high 48 points.