Jay set to host EIAL rivals

Jay County High School has played host to a series of wrestling tournaments.

It brought show choirs to competition on the auditorium stage.

It held the boys and girls swimming sectional meets.

Next week, it’s all about academics.

JCHS will face off against 16 rivals as it hosts the Eastern Indiana Academic League (EIAL) meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the auxiliary gym.

It will mark the second time the school has hosted the EIAL’s big meet since joining the conference almost 10 years ago. It hosted first in 2015, and given the rotation process a return trip was not expected so quickly.

“I thought, ‘Oh, by the time it’s our turn again, 18 schools, I’ll be long retired,’” said Anni McClung, who leads the JCHS academic team.

She was wrong.

Schools in the conference rotate the meet alphabetically. But, some have been skipped as they were unable to host for one reason or another. And this year, intended host Hagerstown chose not to participate.

Next in the alphabet …

Jay County learned from its first EIAL conference meet, which was hosted with 16 schools crammed on the stage in the auditorium.

“The tables were on the edge, they were almost falling off,” said McClung. “So that’s why this year I decided there is no way we are putting an additional school. There’s no way.”

Instead, Monday’s competition will be in the auxiliary gym.

Academic competitions as part of the Indiana Association of School Principals’ Senior Academic Super Bowl, in which JCHS participates, are broken into five disciplines — math, fine arts, English, science and social studies. There is also an interdisciplinary category, which brings all five together.

There are typically 20 questions per category — 25 for the conference meet Monday — with schools fielding teams of three to answer them, explained Jay County senior Raine Keen. Substitutes are allowed midway through the questioning. Whether substitutes are used or not comes down to the coach and the participants.

Some coaches want to get everyone involved.

“And then you have people who just want to win,” said JCHS fine arts coach Liz Lawson, grinning and pointing at herself.

This year’s theme is “The Age of Exploration,” which began in the 1400s and continued through the 1600s. Participants have study guides specific to their discipline, indicating parameters for questions. This year, for instance, science includes navigation and sailing while English focuses on period-appropriate works, including Shakespeare.

Schools participating in Monday’s meet come from across the EIAL’s footprint, bordered by Jay County to the north, Union County to the south and Eastern Hancock to the west. McClung estimated about 300 students would be in attendance for the conference meet.

JCHS has fared well thus far in its season.

It won interdisciplinary (team members were Alex Ardizzone, Hannah Boggs, James Larrowe and Ella Stockton), fine arts (Raine Keen, Sarah McClain, Tsvetelina Boynova and Boggs) and science (Duston Muhlenkamp, Khutso Muthuketela, Ardizzone and Larrowe) at its season-opening five-team meet in January. Emma LeMaster, Lainey Reynolds, Stockton and Boynova took first in English a week later.

And on Valentine’s Day, Ardizzone teamed with Muhlenkamp and Muthuketela to win science and with Barbare Aliashvili and Brooke Stauffer to win social studies while Keen, Stockton, Boynova and LeMaster were first in English.

Also competing for the team are Stacy Fomina, Joseph Boggs, Tessa Miller and Puhiza Shemsedini.

They’re hoping for more success Monday — it’s the next step of preparation for the area contest April 18, which will determine who qualifies for state — and looking forward to taking on their rivals in their own building.

“I think it’ll be nice to not have to travel way far away and get back really late,” said Keen.