Chamblee Middle School’s academic bowl team won the 2011 state championship, according to PAGE, the organization that sponsors the competition.
Chamblee Middle academic bowl coach John Donegan, a seventh grade social studies teacher, joked that the team did well by succeeding in categories other than social studies.
“Our strongest categories turned out to be math and language arts, which hurts me because I’m the social studies teacher,” he said. “You know, they were pretty good in science, too.”
Donegan said the team won 23 games in a row. “We were 23-0,” he said.
The win was the school’s second state championship in recent years, Donegan said. Chamblee also won in 2007, he said.
In PAGE’s academic bowl competitions, teams of middle school students compete by buzzing in to answer questions on subjects ranging from Georgia history to math and science to the performing arts.
“This year’s championship event was especially competitive, and I offer my congratulations and admiration to each team member and their coaches for the many hours of hard work, dedication and practice that brought them to this final round of competition,” said Tom Wommack, president of the PAGE Foundation.
The Chamblee team defeated The Westminster School’s team in the final round, which was held at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville on Feb. 5, PAGE (The Professional Association of Georgia Educators) said in a press release.The Westminster School placed second in the overall tournament.
“It was us against Westminster,” Donegan said. “We got the first six [answers] in a row. You couldn’t quite put the pencil down, but you knew we were going to do very well.”