The Mycenaean

The Leesville Road High School Brain Game held their first meeting of the year on Oct. 23.

The Brain Game, sponsored by WRAL, is a competition where school teams, consisting of students specializing on particular academic subjects, compete statewide for the championship title and MP3 players. “The trivia questions include everything from math and science to arts and current events,” WRAL said describing their content.

The website states: “The atmosphere combines the excitement of a game show with the thrills of a high school pep rally.”

Preparations for the competitions in February and March amp up in December with weekly practices. Finals are held in April where teams all throughout North Carolina compete for prizes.

“It’s a motivated student run group where we each help the others with knowledge; we teach them how to work as a group” said Mrs. Jones, chemistry teacher and supervisor of the club.

Five students showed up to their first meeting on Oct. 22, quite impressive considering it was never announced in the daily announcements. Students taking higher math and science courses are highly encouraged to come out on November 13 to balance the team’s core curricular strengths.

Students who do not want to appear on screen still are encouraged to participate.

“We really do need people to come during our practice to quiz people, we have a very strong liberal arts base, but we really need people strong in math,” Jones said.

In early 2011, the Leesville team had an impressive run, winning two of the three pre- championship matches after being one of the wildcards {the two teams trailing the winner] losing the first game. However they lost in the fourth round by only 10 points, just one round short of the finals.

Disappointment came about as the Brain Team found out they trailed Wakefield, initially thinking they won. Despite that, they were undoubtedly successful placing third in the tournament behind NC School of Science and Math and Wakefield.

Judging from the high turnout in AP Math and Science courses and the very high GPA many of those students currently have, opportunity is unlimited for this team.

The Brain Team will have to do some recruiting, sending out more advertisements or announcements, and students currently involved in the club need to spread the word to their friends and classmates.

Reaching out to students, especially those gifted in Math and Science, will make for an excellent balance among the team members. I suspect with at least 20 members showing up to weekly practices and 3-5 well rounded students, Leesville will have a chance to win the competition next April.