Coweta’s Ella Hummel Heads to National Civics Bee, Competing for $100,000

Fourteen-year-old Ella Hummel of Newnan will represent Georgia on national television Wednesday, October 14, when she competes against 51 other students in the National Civics Bee Championship in Washington, D.C., for a $100,000 education prize.

The Northgate High School freshman earned her place in the competition after winning the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce’s regional Civics Bee in March and the Georgia State Civics Bee in June. Now, she’s preparing for a much different competition, one that will test not only what she knows about American government but also how she collaborates, communicates, and responds under pressure.

The championship will air live on C-SPAN at 8 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, October 14, with actor and television personality Jerry O’Connell serving as host.

A different kind of competition

Hilary Crow, vice president of civics at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and executive producer of the championship, explained that the national competition will be significantly different from the regional and state competitions that brought Ella this far.

Crow leads the team that runs the National Civics Bee, which began as a pilot program in five cities four years ago. This year’s competition drew more than 20,000 students from 240 communities, with 52 finalists representing all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and American Samoa.

At the national championship, students will face five rounds designed to measure knowledge, teamwork, critical thinking, and communication.

The first round will place students into randomly assigned groups to tackle a civic challenge together. Judges will evaluate how students collaborate, navigate different opinions, demonstrate leadership, and develop solutions.

It’s this collaborative portion of the competition that Ella said she’s most excited about.

“I’m excited to have the opportunity to talk to all the different people from all the different states and get their views on certain things,” she told The Citizen this week.

Her father, Andy Hummel, noted in an earlier interview that making connections has been one of the rewards of Ella’s participation in the Civics Bee.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Andy Hummel said. “Everywhere she goes, she’s making new friends.”

Following the team challenge, students who advance will face a multiple-choice civics quiz, followed by a head-to-head round in which competitors are eliminated after answering two questions incorrectly.

The five remaining competitors will answer individual questions about leadership and their ideas for the future, with the audience selecting a People’s Choice Award winner.

The championship will conclude with a Jeopardy-style buzzer round, where finalists must quickly respond to open-ended questions. The student who answers the most questions correctly in that final round will win the national title.

Scores reset between rounds, Crow explained, meaning that strong performance in one round does not provide a scoring advantage in the next.

For Ella, who has already demonstrated her strength in both civics knowledge and public speaking, the buzzer round presents a new challenge.

“I think I’ll do fairly well,” she said. “I feel like I have a pretty good base knowledge, and I think I’m pretty good at taking tests and making inferences through process of elimination.”

But the prospect of having to buzz in before her competitors is another matter.

“That’s what I’m most nervous for,” she said.

Lessons from the football field

Ella has an unusual advantage when it comes to dealing with competition pressure: years of experience playing sports.

At Arnall Middle School, she participated in soccer, volleyball, basketball, and track. Now at Northgate, she’s playing girls’ flag football while taking advanced academic courses.

She said her coaches have taught her a technique that could be just as useful in Washington as it is on the football field.

“I’ve played a lot of sports in my day, and I think that really builds up. If you make a mistake, you just gotta keep going,” Ella said.

On her flag football team, the coaches use a memorable expression to remind players not to dwell on mistakes.

“We have a term where our coaches will tell us to squirrel,” she explained. “If I make a mistake, I’ve got to squirrel. I’ve got to forget about it and move on to the next play and be focused on what’s going on now, not what I messed up on.”

That ability to recover quickly could prove valuable in a competition where every question matters.

An idea that started in Coweta County

Ella’s journey to the national championship began with an eighth-grade class assignment at Arnall Middle School.

Students were asked to write essays identifying a problem in their community and proposing a civic solution. Ella chose food insecurity, developing a proposal to redistribute unserved cafeteria food to students who might otherwise go hungry.

Her proposal included having cafeteria workers package unused food and establishing share tables where students could leave unopened items for redistribution.

After winning the regional Civics Bee, Ella continued researching whether her idea could work within existing food safety regulations.

As The Citizen reported following her state championship, Cynthia Bennett, who coordinates the Newnan-Coweta Chamber’s Civics Bee, helped connect her with the Coweta County School System’s nutrition director to explore the proposal’s feasibility.

The idea carried Ella through the regional and state competitions, where judges asked finalists to explain their proposals and answer questions about implementing them.

At nationals, however, the original essay will no longer be part of the scoring.

Crow explained that students will instead have an opportunity to share their proposals at a civics expo, where business and nonprofit leaders will meet with finalists and discuss their ideas.

The objective is not simply to reward students for memorizing facts about American history and government, but to help them understand how to apply that knowledge to improve their communities.

Why civics matters beyond the classroom

Crow said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation sees civics education as an important part of developing future leaders, employees, and entrepreneurs.

The foundation is the nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its work includes education, workforce development, and community initiatives.

Crow said skills developed through civic engagement, including critical thinking, problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration, are also important in the workplace.

“These are all career skills, right? This is also about career readiness,” Crow said.

She noted that as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into the workplace, those human skills are increasingly important.

The National Civics Bee also seeks to address concerns about declining civic participation and young people’s understanding of government.

Crow said students don’t necessarily begin the competition with an extensive understanding of civics. Rather, the process of researching community problems, learning about government, and competing can help build knowledge and confidence.

“And what’s been missing is just the opportunity,” Crow said. “And so that’s what we’re trying to provide here.”

For Ella, that lesson has become a personal understanding of what it means to participate in democracy.

In her interview following the state championship, she said one of the most important lessons she had learned was the value of civic participation, whether through voting, volunteering, or contacting elected officials.

Representing Georgia in Washington

Ella and her mother plan to travel to Washington on Sunday, October 11, with her father joining them later in the week. Cynthia Bennett, who helped guide Ella through the regional competition and supported her preparation for the state championship, also plans to attend the national competition in person.

The competitors will participate in several days of activities, including organized excursions in the nation’s capital, before Wednesday night’s televised championship.

Ella said she hopes to visit the Washington Monument if her schedule allows.

She also expressed appreciation for the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce and Georgia Chamber of Commerce, both of which have supported her throughout the process.

The national champion will receive a $100,000 contribution to a 529 education savings plan, while second place will receive $25,000 and third place $15,000.

For Ella, the competition represents an opportunity to test her knowledge against some of the nation’s strongest young civics students while learning from others who share her interest in government and community involvement.

And for her family, teachers, and supporters back home in Coweta County, Wednesday night’s broadcast will offer the chance to watch one of their own compete for the national championship.

How to watch: The 2026 National Civics Bee Championship will air live Wednesday, October 14, at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. Viewers can also watch online at C-SPAN.org or on YouTube. More information is available at the National Civics Bee website.