Mean Girls has “The Plastics,” Glee has the “Gleeks,” but CCHS’ main character moment belongs to the National Honor Society (NHS) academic decathlon team, Brain Brawl.
Brain Brawl is an academic-based trivia competition in which different chapters of schools’ honor societies compete against each other in various tournaments and competitions. However, this year’s tournament style will be different from that of the previous years.
This year, the eligible high schools that are competing will be split into two different geographical districts. There is the North district, which will be competing in their double elimination tournament at Monarch High School. There is also the South district, which is home to CCHS and will be competing right on the team’s own turf.
So the CCHS team will have to duke it out with the eight other schools in their district before making it along to the finals at Plantation High School.
Collectively, the team has six members all containing a fair share of AP and AICE credits.
With most of the team members being seniors, they have the advantage of taking a swath of higher-level courses giving them a rich understanding of more topics to use in this game. The topics that the teams will be competing in are art, music, language arts, mathematics, the sciences, social studies and various others.
The team prepares for Districts with practice questions in a range of difficulty as well as in a formation similar to the environment they will be competing in.
They strive for bi-weekly practices to hone their analysis time, speed with hitting the buzzer, and teamwork.
Between litigating what part of the cattle aids in the production of Vitamin A or helping each other brush up on their Marquis de Lafayette trivia, this team truly operates as one composite brain.
But not only is this a team effort divided across the team members, they opened up the opportunity to host the other schools to all of NHS as a general hour opportunity.
“There are different shifts that our members can sign up for such as Breakfast, Lunch, Classroom Preparation, and Decorations,” NHS’ VP of Administration Sukaina Jaffer says. “All of this preparation goes in to make sure our team is as well prepared as we can be, we also want to ensure the competition’s effectiveness as much as we can. The NHS is ready and willing to do as much as we can to help our Cowboys be successful.
Meet the members:
Gabrielle (Gabi) Reed- a junior, first-year, who has the benefit of currently being in AP United States History, making many historical concepts very fresh.
“Being the only junior was a little intimidating at first but it’s not that bad because it is some of the seniors’ first year on the team too,” Reed says. “I think it’ll benefit me in the future because I’ll have more experience next year so I’ll know what I’m doing more and I’ll be able to lead the team.”
Jake Adams, senior co-captain, boasts his second year on the team. One of the few members that can claim that title.
“My goal for the team this year is to win, but more importantly, it’s a great learning experience,” Adams said. “Brain Brawl encourages us to take initiative and become more inquisitive about the world. I hope to achieve this goal by hosting weekly practices to get a better understanding of our strengths.”
Jared Garfinkel, senior, is the President of Robotics Club and holds leadership in various STEM clubs across campus. He can use his skills in these subjects to swiftly answer the questions involving these subjects.
“I hope that my knowledge on science will help contribute to the team,” Garfinkel said. “I think we have a really solid team with a good shot at winning.”
Ethan Bober, senior, is similarly involved in various STEM clubs across campus but his experience with his summer internship at Boston University increased his acumen as his research allowed him to encapsulate more about various aspects in the STEM field.
Samantha (Sam) Carozzi, senior co-captain, is able to credit her math expertise to her experience as the Mu Alpha Theta President.
“Of course I am hoping that we win the district championship again, but I am mostly hoping that we all have a great time,” Carozzi said.
Alexa Freedman, senior, is able to take her extracurriculars and use it to hone her speciality in Biology and Anatomy. Alexa is the President of Future Medical Professional of America (FMPA) and takes this acquired knowledge and uses it to benefit the team in the questions geared in this specialty.
“My goal for this year is to help build a strong, collaborative team and to have fun,” Freedman said.
