Volume 143 No. 17
Friday, March 31, 2017
Single Copy Cost 50¢
Tonica News photo/Dave Cook
The TGS Scholastic Bowl team is comprised of Nathan Carlson (seated, from left), Jonny Johnson, Lauren Johnson, Erin Gray, Wyatt Ficek, coach Julie Beenenga (standing, from left), Brendan Funk, Kyra Cooling, Brice Fundell, Easton Koudelka and co-coach Joshua Sensiba.
Focus and speed
TGS Scholastic Bowl team helps students excel while having fun By Dave Cook
news@tonicanews.com
TONICA — The arena of competition isn’t always on a ball field or in a gymnasium; the Tonica Grade School (TGS) Scholastic Bowl team is a successful and competitive part of the school’s extracurricular activities. Students who participate in academic teams have been shown to have gained greater academic confidence through their experiences. The matches can also provide students who may not be interested in athletics the chance to experience the same thrill of competition that athletes feel during a ball game. Comprised of nine students (six eighth-graders, two sev-
enth-graders and one sixth-grader) and coached by Julie Beenenga with assistance from former team member and L-P sophomore Joshua Sensiba, the team has a 6-3 record so far this year after a victory against Waltham Grade School on March 22. “I love being a part of the team; it’s a great experience for everyone,” Beenenga said, “More than just academics, it also gives those students who excel at trivia an opportunity to apply their knowledge and be a part of the team’s success.” Sensiba said he enjoyed being on the Scholastic Bowl team while a student at TGS, and he’s been happy to return. “I like dedicating my time to them, and it’s a great way to help out. Being a part of the team when I was a student here definitely contributed to my academic knowledge,” he said.
Eighth-graders Jonny Johnson and Brendan Funk have both been on the team for the past three years. Johnson felt his strongest area is with math questions and said the hardest ones to answer were those about art and architecture. Funk, who plays piano, enjoys the questions about music and said history was his most difficult category. Johnson said “expressing random knowledge” was what he enjoys most about being on the team. Funk added he liked the wide variety of questions they’re challenged to answer. Does being on the team make the members better students?
Scholastic Bowl Page 2
The aerodynamics of lasagna
IVCC’s 12th Annual Edible Car Contest educates and entertains By Dave Cook
news@tonicanews.com
OGLESBY — It’s an unusual sight to see people cheering as four slices of cantaloupe, a carrot and some cinnamon sticks slowly slide down an incline of a few feet, but it was surprisingly fun to watch. For the past 12 years IVCC has hosted a competition combining the unusual combination of food, science, speed and fun — The Edible Car Contest. Teams from IVCC and many of the area’s high schools gathered in the cafeteria to test their designs in the creative, colorful contest that shows that STEM (science, technology, Vol. 143 No. 17 One Section - 8 Pages
© The Tonica News
engineering and math) can be silly as well as serious. The annual contest celebrates National Engineering Week and was originally sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Since 2006, it’s been sponsored by the Workforce Development Division. There was a wide variety of food used for the entries, including salami, marshmallows, cookies, pasta, snack cakes, vegetables, fruits and crackers. Some certainly worked better than others. The most critical design challenges according to two of the BCR photo/Dave Cook racers were “axles that don’t break” and Hall High School’s cleverly designed, lasagna-bodied and Lifesaver-wheeled entry won
Edible cars Page 2
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the speed and creativity portions of IVCC’s 12th annual Edible Car Contest. Hall won the Top 3 spots in the speed competition; a Hall team also set the speed record in 2012.
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