If you spoke to Weehawken High School students John Grossi and Mike Maione before the school’s Academic Club team participated in its first match this week against Hoboken, you would think you were listening to Yankees manager Joe Torre talking about a young rookie phenom. Grossi is a veteran of three Weehawken Academic Club teams. So the senior will take the role of the Yankee skipper here. “A lot of the rookies are surprising,” Grossi said. “I think we have what it takes. As a veteran and as the captain, I’m looking forward to working with these younger guys. You get used to having the same people around you and we lost a lot of players from last year. But the younger guys are showing a lot of promise.” OK, skipper. And, now, to the rookie phenom, who is up from the minor leagues of academia for the first time. “It’s been good to watch the veterans, to get a sense of what to do,” said Maione. “I’m still not used to it all. It’s a learning experience for me.” Yes, it’s the Academic Bowl, not the first day of spring training for the World Champs. But it sure as well sounded like it. The students at Weehawken High take this Academic Bowl very seriously. It’s the 10th year that the competition has been held throughout the county, with an all-time high of 11 schools participating this year in the month-long competition, held every Wednesday at North Bergen High School. Kearny and McNair Academic of Jersey City joined the competition for the first time this year. For the prior three years, Weehawken served as the host school, which meant that Grossi and his teammates had sort of a home-field advantage. But this year, the highly competitive tournament was shifted to North Bergen. “It is different, because we’re not hosting,” said the loquacious Grossi. “Because we’re not home, maybe we’re a little less confident. Anyone who was here last year is trying to help the newcomers with what kind of questions to look for. A little pep talk, with what trends to keep an eye on. You can look for anything from naming the Seven Seas to the Mosques of Spice. It all depends on how much of the Discovery Channel you watched the night before.” Maione, who plays for both the Weehawken football and baseball teams, equated the Academic Bowl with competitive sports. “It’s kind of similar because of all the preparation, but it’s not the same, because there’s not a lot of sweat involved,” Maione said. “It does take practice and you have to be mentally prepared. But it’s not so much in the physical sense. But we take a lot of pride in it. We’re representing Weehawken and that means a lot. One of the most important factors in this is the pride. We don’t want to walk around school if we get our butts kicked. We want to walk around with our heads held high.” Each team consists of six players, four active players and two reserves. There are eight questions in each of six categories. Each question is worth a certain amount of points, with the harder questions earning more points. After 12 questions are asked, a reserve could enter the contest. As soon as the entire grid of questions is asked, the points are added and a winner is declared. It’s a fun competition, but it certainly can get tough. Weehawken student advisor Mary Bea Kingwill, one of the main organizers of the tournament since its inception, thinks that the Academic Bowl gives other students the opportunity to experience school spirit and competition. “It is such a fun thing for the kids,” said Kingwill, who has taught in the Weehawken school system for more than 25 years. “They get to see kids from the other schools, whom perhaps they competed against the year before. I know a lot of them would like more than just a few weeks. They would want it to go the entire year. But the Academic Bowl is a springboard for other student activities. It’s a social kind of thing and gives them the extra outlet that they might not get if they don’t participate in sports.” Added Kingwill, “I’ve been involved all 10 years and it gets larger and larger. We brought in more schools this year and that’s wonderful. And it does become just as competitive as games that are played on the court or on a football field.” Kingwill also lamented the fact that the tournament is being held somewhere else other than Weehawken this year. “As much work as it was, I miss that we’re not having it at Weehawken,” Kingwill said. “That’s the only downside.” As for the tournament itself, the questions were unlike anything Maione or Grossi had heard in a classroom recently. The Weehawken students tried to come up with the correct answers within a limited time span – and it wasn’t easy. Questions about a variety of topics were offered, and these were not the kind of questions one would find on “Jeopardy!” Even Alex Trebek would be stumped. “We have a greater knowledge,” Grossi said before the tournament. “We have to flex our muscles.” There wasn’t any flexing once the questions began. Here’s a random sampling. In the topic of current events: “In 1972, this car became the most produced car in the world, with more than 15 million worldwide.” The answer was the Volkswagen Beetle. In entertainment: “Founded in 1913, this was the first stage actors union.” The answer? Equity. There were questions about what spice is readily used on eggnog (answer: Nutmeg) and what former New York Yankee slugger holds the record for grand slams in a season with six (answer: Don Mattingly, although some sports fanatics question the validity of that one). The questions got much tougher. What’s the southernmost active volcano in the world? Mount Erebus. What fruit cannot be added to Jello because it will not gelatinize? Pineapple. The best question was this doozy. Get paper and pen out. You have 20 minutes to answer. In the category of health and science, “In an alternating current circuit, this concept is used to characterize a passive circuit element. Analogous to resistance in direct current circuits, it is measured in ohms and its ratio of the voltage aptitude to the current aptitude. The phase difference between the voltage and current through it completes the description of this term.” Got all that? The correct answer is impedance. Weehawken lost to Hoboken during the opening round. The proud team will look to rebound this week. “We’re going to tend to go for more of the broad conceptual approach next time,” Grossi said. As long as there are no questions about ohms and voltage aptitude.
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