Members of the varsity and junior varsity academic team prepare for their regional match. Varsity Academic Team coach and social studies department teacher Drew Wheeler prepares his team for competition by practicing every Monday for competitions, which are every Friday. “We just practice, we go over sets of questions, old questions, and just make sure we’re still on top of that, and I encourage (the team) to study and go over places where we have gaps and we’re missing subjects where we might not be strong,” Wheeler said.
By ANA ALDRIDGE – Staff Writer
Varsity Academic Team coach and social studies department teacher Drew Wheeler, talks about the team’s winning streak and his expectations for regionals.
Ana Aldridge: Has the team competed yet?
Drew Wheeler: Yeah, we’re almost done with the season. We have one more regular season match to go. The varsity is undefeated. We’ve beaten Morgan County, Oglethorpe County, Oconee County and North Oconee. And the JV is 2 and 2. They’ve beat North Oconee and Oglethorpe and we have one match left to go against Loganville, and then we have the region tournament.
AA: What are your expectations for the region tournament?
DW: Varsity won last year, and I don’t know about expect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to win it again against the few teams we have left. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to win, but I wouldn’t be shocked if we were to lost in the final or something like that.
AA: I know that in our last interview, the team was struggling to find participants due to a loss of seniors. How is that going?
DW: It’s more a problem for the JV. We need some more ninth graders to actually to come in, because next year we’re gonna lose the group of 10th graders we have will move up to varsity, so we’ll actually need some recruiting there. Varsity’s fine right now. We will be losing some strong seniors, but the varsity, number wise, the varsity should be fine. It’s the JV that could use some more people.
AA: How is this season going in comparison to last year?
DW: It’s very similar. Last year, especially on varsity because we were undefeated last year on varsity, so the goal right now the seniors have is to finish undefeated again. So that would make them undefeated once again.
AA: Have you enjoyed coaching the team this season?
DW: Yeah, it’s always a lot of fun. A lot of the kids I know most of them from 1, 2, 3 or 4 years so yeah it’s a lot of fun.
AA: If you were to go on to state, how would you prepare for that?
DW: No different really, just practice a lot.
AA: How often have practices been?
DW: We just have them once a week. What we do is usually on Monday morning we’ll have practices and on Monday afternon we’ll compete.”
