Seniors Lexie Krehbiel and Brandon Bailer were both part of the All-Star Brevard County Academic team which traveled to Disney last week to compete in the Commissioner’s Academic Challenge. The team took third in the state after multiple elimination rounds. This is Bailer’s third time being chosen to compete in the competition.

“I’ve been able to compete for the past three years, and this year I was hoping to make it to nationals. In past years, we had never made it to the final, and it was always because of one question,” Bailer said.

Although the team didn’t qualify for nationals, they did make it to the finals by winning a tough first round.

“I was hoping to take first or second right away so we could spend the rest of the day at Disney, but we missed that by one question because the group we were in was very difficult with big districts like Seminole who sucked up all the points,” Bailer said. “Because of this, we were forced to play in an elimination round the next morning. I wasn’t sure we would make it to the semifinal because it would be the first time, but I really wanted to because this is my last chance as a senior so I took over and answered a lot of questions.”

The team eventually managed to beat out the other teams and move on to the semifinals by winning the round by just one question. We got much luckier in this round because we were in a significantly easier group. They got to spend the rest of the day at Disney, and the next day they competed for the semifinals and took third place in the state.

By Danny Dolnik and Shane Potter