A team of students from Grand Rapids City High-Middle School, Forest Hills Northern, and Coopersville High School are celebrating victory in the National Academic Games Tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Five teenagers-- Dan Scherphorn (City High), Jack Culp (City High), Ian Wesolowski (City High), Jacob BronkemBekker (Coopersville), and Trey Moore (Forest Hills Northern) won second place in Linguishtik and third place in both Equations and Onsets. Dan Scherphorn and Jack Culp each had perfect scores in Linguishtik. Jack Culp and Jacob  BronemBekker each had perfect scores in Equations.
 

Academic Games Leagues of America is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing “thinking kids” of character, excellence, and integrity.  The organization’s tournaments challenge students to use higher order thinking skills when it comes to language arts, English, history, and mathematics.

“New facility offers opportunities to satisfy the “Geek” in anyone,” describes a new non-profit Geek group, formed in 1994 at Grand Valley State University, located in Allendale. The actual location of the facility is located at 902 Leonard NE in Grand Rapids, MI.

Recently Chris Boden, president and CEO of the Geek Group, gave a tour to high school teachers, administrators and board members to show them what really goes on within the facility and the opportunities offered. According to Chris, “this is an opportunity to wake kids up from taking a nap in class to learning to like science and technology. That is why the Group is here.”

This facility offers something most schools cannot, and that is million dollar pieces of equipment, just to play with. In college, it may take 3 years just to get in touch with a robot half the size of what we have.