BY SOPHIA WENGIER
On Saturday, October 15th, Cooper City High School’s NJROTC competed in the Brain Brawl held at Boca Raton High School. After studying hard, our team put together what they knew and ended the day with a first place trophy to take home for the second time this year.
Brain Brawl is an assessment and competition of knowledge in Naval Sciences. The questions asked can come from any of the Naval Science textbooks which include history, science, regulations, physical health, navy ships, and more. With such a large amount of material, it can be hard to prepare for these competitions. Despite this, Cooper’s ROTC teams come prepared and have been able to succeed at every Brain Brawl.
“Brain Brawl is beyond your average trivia in that it expands into too many subjects to count,” Petty Officer First Class Jesse Klauber said. “This basically creates a sense of responsibility to your own intelligence and to your teammates so you can succeed.”
Each school in the district takes one or two teams of people to compete. These teams are made up of students of different levels based on how many years they have been in the program. This assures that all teams are somewhat equal in their level of experience. The competition is then divided into two rounds: prelims and finals. Cooper City’s team won both rounds and even beat the second place team, Flanagan High School, by a wide margin of 50 points in the finals round.
“I felt really proud that we competed against Flanagan,” Command Master Chief Greg Zhoba said. “As a team, we were able to prevail and beat them by a large number of points.”
While proud of their accomplishments, the Cooper City NJROTC is going to continue to work hard to do well in the championships for regionals and, eventually, make it all the way to nationals.
“I’m extremely proud of both academic teams for persevering through a strong Flanagan and Boca team and coming out on top in both competitions,” Senior Training Advisor Cory Rivas said. “I’m excited to see what’s in store for us.”
