Academic Clubs Make LP History

Sophomore Jonah Felder from Baden will represent Lincoln Park at the national Academic Games competition in Charlotte, N.C. next month.

For the first time in Lincoln Park history, LP’s middle school Future City team made it to nationals, and the Academic Games team had a record number of competitors place at the state competition.

The Future City team won first place at the regional competition in Pittsburgh with their city, Aquasilva. With this underdog victory, the team became eligible for the national competition in Washington, D.C, where they placed seventh in the City Essay category and in the top 25 internationally.

Club advisor Lara Pavlick, who works in the science department at LP, shared in an email interview, “The students start in August on learning about the yearly challenge (this year it was Farm to Table: reducing food waste) and deciding on a location that would offer benefits to building a futuristic city.”

“I have them pitch this to the group, and we vote on our favorite location and name choice,” Ms. Pavlick added. “This year, we went with the Ucayali River Highlands of Peru in the Amazon Basin and the name ‘Aquasilva,’ meaning ‘water forest.’”

One of Ms. Pavlick’s favorite parts of the competition was seeing her students “forge new friendships with the student presenters from all over the world.” More than 45 U.S. teams attended this year in the middle school division, and there were also teams from China and Mexico.

Team manager Amara Beeman wrote in an email interview that her favorite part of the competition was “the diversity and the different ideas we got for the city, like what people wanted the city to look like, to what energy source to use.”

As great as this opportunity was, things didn’t go completely according to plan.

“My experience with nationals was great,” explained Beeman, an eighth-grade film and broadcasting major from Aliquippa, “but we did have some difficulties transporting the model. The model arrived all destroyed. But with our team and some other competitors’ help, we got the model back in shape.”

Beeman has aged out of the middle school division and can no longer compete on the school-sponsored team, but she is optimistic for the future of the club.

“I do hope that the seventh graders that did come to nationals and are doing this next year take some inspiration from the other teams and use what they have learned on the trip,” she said.

As for the Academic Games team, the state competition, known as Tri-Bowl, was a blistering success. Out of the six members who competed, three placed in the top three.

Felicity Portoulas tied for second in the Propaganda category; Jonah Felder achieved a medaling score in Equations; and Abigail Cunningham also achieved a medaling score in LinguiSHTIK.

Felder, a sophomore writing and publishing major from Baden, enjoyed making new friends the most.

“The games themselves are nerve wracking, but it’s a lot calmer than you’d expect,” he explained. “I made a lot of great friends there, and I’m happy I went because I got to meet some really cool people.”

With nationals approaching quickly in April, Felder is taking things day by day.

“I hope to just do the best I can,” he said. “Just, basically, if I win, that’s great. I am really competitive, and I would really like to.

“But also, I just want to hang out with people that I’ve met across any of the academic games competitions,” added Felder, “because the same people from Tri-Bowl are going to be at Nationals, and I’m excited to see them again because you only see them twice a year.”

Ms. Pavlick, who is also a co-advisor of the LP Academic Games team, shared a similar goal as Felder for the team at nationals.

“As the middle school coach, I hope that all middle school students enjoy their first national tournament experience and leave with lots of knowledge gained, ready for next year!” Ms. Pavlick wrote. “I wish the same for all of our high school students.”

The full list of Lincoln Park’s Academic Games nationals qualifiers is:

Abigail Cunningham

Alea (Katie) LaFaye

Arlenn Doerschner

Chloe Barnes

Cooper Valko

Ellis Mick

Emmett Mick

Hannah Grooms

Jonah Felder

Rudy Sckena

Sophie Panella

Sylvan Paglia

Felicity Portoulas

Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School is a tuition-free public charter school located in Midland, PA, and open to all Pennsylvania families. Students grades 7-12 are bused from nearly 90 different school districts to study the arts concentration of their choice: theatre, writing and publishing, media arts, health science and the arts, music, dance, and pre-law and the arts.

For more information, visit lppacs.org or contact: admissions@lppacs.org