If you’ve never participated in or watched a Governor’s Cup academic match, you don’t know what you’re missing. There are many who can’t imagine that an academic competition could be exciting, and they would be wrong.

There are individual and team events. Students can compete in any combination of three events: quick recall, future problem solving, or written assessment. The individual events aren’t very exciting to watch. Students can test individually in one of six areas – language arts, science, math, social studies, arts and humanities, and composition. Proctoring a test isn’t a lot of fun. The excitement is in waiting to see who places in the top 5 and advances from district to region and from region to state. Future problem solving isn’t much fun to watch either, as teams complete their booklets to demonstrate their problem solving skills. Quick recall is the most exciting of the three types of events.

Unlike when watching an athletic event, when watching quick recall and cheering your team on, you must be absolutley silent. Teams of four students each compete to see who can correctly answer the most questions in the allotted time. Substitutions can be made. Coaches can file an inquiry form if they disagree with a ruling made by either the judge or moderator. Based on the results of an inquiry, points may be taken away or added to a team’s score. Just like in an athletic event, sometimes one team takes the match and runs away with it. And like in an athletic event, those aren’t the most exciting to watch. Other times, however, it’s a tight match: the score is close, the clock is ticking, the questions are running out. In those cases, a quick recall match can be every bit as stressful as an athletic event. Add in the possibility of inquiries and adding or taking away points, and the match can easily become more stressful than an athletic event. Of course, unless you’ve participated in a quick recall match or you’ve watched one, you will not appreciate that element of the competition.

Unlike with athletic events, academic matches don’t have large crowds of spectators. That in itself is a shame. Those students work just as hard as the students who play sports. They deserve a crowd of supporters as much as any sports team does. Unfortunately, they’re used to not getting the same kind of support, and that’s a shame.

District Governor’s Cup was today, and the finalists for regional Governor’s Cup have been set. In three weeks, schools across the state will gather to compete for the chance to advance to state competition in Lexington, KY.  Students and teams will spend the next three weeks practicing and studying. If students place in region, they will advance to state competition in mid-March. In the meantime, you should find out who your school’s academic team members are, and you should congratulate them on a job well done and wish them well for their regional competition. And if you’re feeling particularly frisky, you should try to get to the regional competition to show some support for those students.