From left, Franklin Community High School social studies team members Shawn Grider, Noah Woods, Jaden Crisafulli, Liam Clarke and Luke Bromley claimed a share of the Indiana Academic Super Bowl title on May 6 at Purdue University.
When the Franklin Community High School social studies team came up just short of an Indiana Academic Super Bowl title last year, they made it a mission to claim the crown.
Junior Shawn Grider, senior Liam Clarke, sophomore Luke Bromley, sophomore Noah Woods and senior captain Jaden Crisafulli, started preparing for this year’s competition as soon as they learned what book they’d have to study last summer. After months of detailed preparation and practice, they hoisted the banner as 2023 Indiana Academic Super Bowl State Champions at Purdue University on May 6.
They shared the title with Northrop High School of Fort Wayne, which they deadlocked with even after multiple tiebreakers, said Angela Koontz, social studies teacher and social studies academic team coach at FCHS.
They all took the time they otherwise would have off to read Charles C. Mann’s book “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created” about the long-lasting effects of the Columbian exchange from front to back multiple times. Crisafulli said he read the book six times.
“The book discusses four main sections of the world, with the impact of the exchange on Africa, Europe, Asia and North and South America. We learned about the rubber trade, the silver trade, malaria, the slave trade and escaped slave communities,” Crisafulli said. “The book does a great job of not using a Eurocentric perspective. It gives every single perspective and cultural thought at the time.”
The Columbian Exchange is the opening up of commerce around the globe set off by Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. Although Columbus’ arrival and the opening up of exchange had vast effects, including some negative ones, the magnitude of the event in history shouldn’t be overlooked, Clarke said.
“Part of the argument in the book, with people talking about how bad Columbus is, is even though he’s seen as a bad person, he was really important in history,” he said.
Team members met each week to discuss themes and topics from each chapter of the book. They drew bubbles on the whiteboard containing bullet points from those topics and used lines to connect their causes and effects. The dedication the students displayed was inspiring, Koontz said.
“As a history teacher, this has been such a dream,” she said. “I’m in awe of how hard they worked.”
In the competition, students had 20 seconds to answer each of the 25 multiple-choice questions. The social studies team qualified for the state contest as one of the top seven squads in Indiana, which has 76 social studies teams. The students from Franklin High School outscored Class 1 teams from Terre Haute, Avon, Greenwood and Fishers at the state meet, getting 23 of 25 questions correct, compared to getting 17 correct the previous year, Crisafulli said.
All the starters on the team were part of the team that went to state last year, and they used that experience to guide them and give them more confidence, Clarke said.
The students also had enthusiasm for the topic of the Columbian exchange and its wide-ranging impacts on the world today, and that enthusiasm translated to success, Woods said.
“The Columbian exchange explored a lot of the ecological impacts of all these crops, animals and diseases, even people moving place-to-place,” he said. “It created brand-new ecosystems with drastic effects on the world, including government, culture and world trade. The Columbian exchange is still in motion today.”
The state title is the end result of countless hours of work, Crisafulli said.
“It’s a vindication of ‘hard work leads to success,’ and it’s worth it,” he said. “If you have a goal and put in the effort to achieve it, you’ll be there.”
