Deaf academic team places at nationals

The Starr’s Mill High Academic Bowl Team for the Deaf represented Georgia at the 2016 National Academic Bowl for Deaf and Hard of Hearing high school students at Gallaudet University, taking fourth-place honors.

Starr’s Mill was one of the top 24 teams in the nation invited to compete at the 20th annual academic bowl April 23-26 in Washington, D.C. The team qualified for the national competition after earning a wildcard spot at the Kentucky School for the Deaf Southeast Regional, one of four regional competitions in the nation. Team members include Darius Copper, Anna Martin, David Martin, and Liam O’Connell.

Gallaudet, the world’s only liberal arts university in which all programs and services are designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students, created the academic bowl for high school students in 1996. The competition consists of a question and answer game of general knowledge and quick recall. Questions are drawn from the following categories: social studies, language and literature, science and technology, potpourri, mathematics, the arts, deaf studies, current events, and pop culture, leisure, and sports.

This is the seventh year that Starr’s Mill has had a team competing at the national level. The coaches are Cindy Hartpence and Samandra Muniz.