School Duel revamp: CCHS participates in South Florida’s academic decathlon amid COVID-19

BY NICOLE NADLER

School Duel is South Florida’s elite high school TV quiz show in which high school teams answer high-level, academically rigorous questions. Over the years, CCHS has participated in this TV quiz show. This year, under COVID-19 guidelines, the School Duel organization had to go under reconfiguration.

Prior to the competition, science teacher David Schultz reached out to junior Dylan Bober about the competition. Bober, who is the Team Captain, then recruited junior Zachary Roisman and senior Ander Diez through a process that tested their ability to answer questions similar to those in the competition.

“…we learned to trust each other so we can let our teammates answer instead of hastily answering ourselves,” Roisman said.

Amid the pandemic, there also needed to be a new method to hold practices since many extracurricular activities are still being conducted virtually. The team needed to get over the hurdle of not getting the real-life feel of this competition. However, this did not hold them back from success.

“To prepare, we had a few Zoom calls ahead of time where we practiced trivia questions together in a similar format…”

School Duel team member and senior Ander Diez

“To prepare, we had a few Zoom calls ahead of time where we practiced trivia questions together in a similar format, and I also watched old CCHS School Duel episodes with my family in the days leading up to the match,” Diez said.

The School Duel competition set-up itself is usually conducted in-person with the students from each school teaming up beside a panel across the opposing team. The previous arrangement of podiums had each student directly next to each other on a single stand, with an audience cheering as questions were answered correctly. 

To facilitate COVID-19 safety measures this year, there are now individual desks for each student from each team and no audience to maintain proper social distancing measures.

“All podiums were spaced six feet apart, teams were much smaller, masks were mandatory, temperature checks were taken, click-out detection [was] enabled, as well as a tightly timed test,” Bober said.

The CCHS team will be competing against Sheridan Technical High School. If the team wins, they will advance to the next rounds and that leads up to the finals. The team that wins each episode will also receive a year-long supply of Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches which comes in 52 gift cards, one for each week.

The competition round episode will air on Thursday, March 18 at 8:00 p.m. via BECON-TV (channel 488 and 19 Comcast, channel 63 AT&T/Dish/Direct TV). It will also be broadcasted on the BECON-TV website.

“The best part was just being able to compete against another school during the pandemic,” Bober said. “We’re all incredibly grateful to Mr. Schultz and BECON-TV for working to put this on in a safe manner that was still fun for everyone.”

Photo courtesy of School Duel on Instagram