If you can’t manage to catch, kick or throw a ball, running is impossible and even the sight of a football pitch makes you feel faint, yet your command of calculus is impeccable and you know the entire canon of Shakespeare by heart and every date in American history from the Pilgrims to the Bay of Pigs, then Academic League is for you. Essentially a quiz game, open to students between the ages of 14 and 18, with questions based on the American high school curriculum, Academic League bears more resemblance to a team sport like American football than it does to quiz night down at the local pub.

The Teams

As with any sport, it's rather difficult to get on an Academic League team, due to the competitive nature of the tryouts. These will occur long before the season starts. This date varies depending on the individual league, but it usually occurs sometime in the beginning of February. Thus, tryouts will be held in January, once school has resumed following the winter holidays. The prospective players are most commonly auditioned through a mock match, pitting two ‘teams’ of five players each against each other, while the teams’ coaches will read out questions and score the players. Based on the results from these tryouts, students who have made it will be sorted into one of three teams, the names of which are based on the divisions for high school sports teams.

Novice

The beginners' team, this level is open to ninth and tenth grade students, usually between the ages of 14 and 16. The questions are considerably easier than those of any of the other teams, and first-year students will usually get placed here. Novice teams rarely attend tournaments¹ or play in championships, and the idea of the novice division is primarily to prepare students for the upper levels of play.

Since Academic League questions are curriculum-based, novice questions reflect the nature of the typical high school curriculum for ninth and tenth graders. Questions will often be asked on such diverse subjects as mythology, Shakespeare, earth science, physics, algebra, geometry, European history and ancient history. The questions are often such that any person with a good range of general knowledge could answer them — but it certainly helps to have a good recall of your high school classes!

Junior Varsity

The middle-level team, JV is open to anyone between the ages of 14 and 17², but it usually consists solely of eleventh graders. Though the vast amount of opportunities for competition are directed towards more experienced players, there will be certain events for JV that take place outside of the main season, and JV teams will compete in the city finals after the main season is over.

JV questions, in addition to encompassing pre-calculus, chemistry, physics and biology, place a large emphasis on American knowledge, just as the English and history curricula for eleventh graders focus on American history and literature. Students might receive questions about the novels of Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut, or the events of the War of 1812 or the expansionist era.

Varsity

The varsity Academic League team is considered to be the best of the best. The captain of the varsity team can very likely be that same person who will be valedictorian³ of the graduating class and holds all the other offices and captaincies that a nerd can possibly garner. In short, he or she is the student who, of all the school, is most renowned academically. The other players are not far behind: they consist of a select, carefully-auditioned group, and in some cases may even be hand-picked by the coach from previous years' JV and varsity teams. It is very rare that a non-senior⁴ is selected for the varsity team, though it can and does happen occasionally. It is difficult for a younger player to attain the honour of varsity team member, simply because younger students haven't been exposed to the advanced courses and additional parts of the curriculum that twelfth grade students have.

Varsity teams, as might be expected, have the widest opportunity for competition. Every off-season tournament is open to schools with varsity teams. Additionally, after the main season is over, varsity teams that have done well in city finals will proceed to the county level, and then to state level and the famed nationals, if they’ve succeeded throughout. The probability that a single school's team will consistently make it past county levels is small, though certain schools across the nation have acquired a ‘winning’ reputation and continue to return to the national level of competition.

The Coaches

The head coach of an Academic League team is always a teacher at the team’s school. Academic League is treated as a 'club' at most schools, which means it requires a president and a teacher sponsor, and can then receive money from the school to go to competitions and host tournaments. In this case, the captain of the varsity team would be considered the 'president' of the 'club' and the coach would be the teacher sponsor. If a teacher coach specialises in one particular subject, he or she may call in other teachers or parents to assist in coaching the team in the 'missing' subjects.

During an official match, the coach has two main functions: they may make substitutions of players throughout the game, by calling a time-out and rotating players in or out as necessary; and they may contest answers that are incorrect. This could occur if the player on a team gives an answer which is deemed to be incorrect, but the coach believes that the answer is right. In this case, the team in question would be accorded the points due them. Alternatively, a coach could also contest if the answer read out is deemed to be incorrect, or if the question is patently confusing or poorly-worded such that a correct answer would be difficult to arrive at. In this case, the question would simply be thrown out, and play would progress with the next question. If there is no coach present at the match, the captain of the team has the right to fulfil the coach's functions.

The final role of a coach is to chaperone their team(s) to events, such as state or national competitions, which may take place some distance from the team's home base. This is, understandably, a nerve-wracking duty, and some coaches might even prefer losing repeatedly to being required to chaperone five teenagers across the country for a week.

Practices

Practices aren't quite as involved as those for actual athletic sports: Academic League teams do not, by and large, spend several hours per week out in the field. Practice is usually confined to one lunchtime or after-school session per team per week, where questions are asked by the coach and players buzz in as if in a real match. In the event that a team is preparing for higher levels of competition, though, more time may be invested in practice, as would be expected.

Some teams, understandably, are more serious than others: at a tournament, with several different schools attending, one may notice the distinct differences between the team that is playing tag through the building and having water fights in the washrooms, and the team that is gathered in a sedate group, studiously studying questions from last year's nationals. It is usually the teams that put in the extra effort that win more games, though Academic League is a sport that places great store in individual intelligence. The best thing a team can do is encourage its players to prep assiduously on their own and to pay attention in class!

The Match

The match can last, in total, for around three hours, from the pre-match set-up to the finale of the varsity match. The various elements are discussed below.

Setup

The match always takes place at one of the team’s schools, and thus can be considered a 'home' or 'away' game, depending on your perspective. Thus, it is necessary for the hosting team to prepare the facility being used for the match, usually the school's theatre/assembly hall or library. If there are no chairs already in place, it is necessary to arrange rows of them, with an aisle dividing the rows down the middle: one side for each team's supporters. Two tables will be placed in the front of the room, or on the stage if there is one — one for each team. On these, the buzzer system will be set up. This consists of: a small push-button for each of the five players per team, a central box that shows who has rung in, and a 'match clock' on which the time left in the match is displayed. A blackboard is placed to the side of the tables, on which the score will be displayed, and a lectern for the moderator⁵ is placed in front, facing the teams' tables. At this point, about a half-hour before the match is due to start, the set-up is complete.

Once the room is prepared for the match, the hosting team is free to relax and chat — this is often about academic matters or current events, which is hardly surprising due to the nature of the sort of students who end up on Academic League teams. During this interim, the opposing side will start to trickle in, often in school shirts or other paraphernalia representative of the school which they represent. This is the norm, though one team was known to effect a 'casual' look, wearing shorts to every match⁶, and another tradition cultivated by some teams is to wear shirts with the logos of the universities the team members are interested in attending.

The Games

At 7pm, once both teams have arrived, the novice game begins. This is 20 minutes long, and is followed by the JV game, at 25 minutes, and the 30-minute varsity game. Members of the hosting teams that are not playing at one moment or another are asked to operate the buzzers, the match clock or the scoreboard. Often these are the novice players, who will not be asked to substitute in at a moment's notice.

There are two main types of questions that will be asked during a match. The first, the toss-up, is a normal sort of question from English, history, maths, science, foreign languages, art and music or current events, with a simple answer. Any player from either team may buzz in if they know the answer, and once recognised by the person in charge of the buzzers, may give it. Three points are awarded for a correctly-answered toss-up, and one point is subtracted if an incorrect answer is given. If the first team to buzz in gets the toss-up wrong, the second team may buzz in. If the second team gets the question right, they are still awarded the three points, but no points are deducted if they are wrong.

If a team correctly answers a toss-up, they are awarded a bonus question. This is a more difficult question, involving multiple parts⁷, and the team is allowed to confer for 20 seconds. When the 20 seconds are up, the captain of the team usually gives the team's answers, though they may choose to defer to another member of the team. A team can be awarded up to five points for a bonus, depending on how many parts of the question they got right. Play then proceeds to the next toss-up.

At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins. The winning team will be applauded, the two teams shake hands very sportingly, and players are switched for the next game. At the end of all three games, the two teams pack up and go home, ready to return next week for another game.

Nationals

After several successive wins at matches as described above, and several successive wins at the more publicised (and televised) county- and state-level tournaments, it's on to nationals! This championship tournament, for the best varsity teams that belong to the National Academic League association, has taken place in such locations as New Orleans (2004) and Chicago (2005). This is where everything comes to a head, and where winning teams from all fifty states play each other in a five day-long round robin tournament. The final match will be broadcast on national television. The winning team will, in addition to being lauded (at least by other nerds) and gaining a valuable addition to the college application resume, get a large, shiny trophy and perhaps a small monetary prize.

Then it's back home again — the varsity team need to get their write-up in the school paper, the players need to be told by their parents how brilliant they (the players) are, and everything generally winds down. Until next year, that is: when new teams are picked, the National Academic League changes all the rules completely and yet another season is played. Academic League is a permanent fixture, really: while the badminton and roller-hockey teams may fluctuate from year to year, and once in a while a table-tennis team may spring up, there will always be nerds who'd rather solve calculus equations than play basketball⁸. And Academic League will always be there for them to do just that.