Elder’s academic team might not be as well-known as some of the school’s other teams like football or basketball, but it has managed over the last four years to put together a winning team that has tied for first place in the GCL for the past two seasons.

So with all that said, it might come as a surprise that the team’s existence is hanging in the balance as the overwhelming majority of the team prepares to graduate at the end of this school year. As it stands right now, if all the underclassmen members of the team rejoined again next year there would still be less than the minimum four members the team would need to compete.

With this in mind Coach Mr. Ciddiea allowed anyone with an interest to come with the team and compete in a post-season tournament at Cincinnati State, but unfortunately this plan wasn’t the success that he was hoping for.

This has led to a number of the senior members of the team having serious doubts that the academic team may not even have the minimum amount of members to even exist or compete next year. Senior Chris Deters is one of these seniors. Deters, a consistent member of the varsity team for the last two years doesn’t have faith that Elder would be able to get the four student members to compete next year, let alone a team that could compete against the larger teams in the GCL.

As the team prepares for the biggest tournament that the team has ever faced, the state tournament in Columbus later this month, this next challenge remains a daunting challenge on the horizon that members of the team, including the seniors are trying to tackle.

The seniors that make up the majority of the team are taking a leading role in trying to reach out to talent in the younger grades in an attempt to continue the legacy that they helped build by keeping the team afloat for at least another school year.

In fact it was a senior member of the team, Collin Schwiers who came up with the idea to allow non-team member underclassmen to be able to compete and get an idea of what being a member of the academic team is all about.

Unfortunately this plan didn’t work as well as it could have, and the team’s future is still unclear.

With all of this happening it can be hard for the team to focus on their upcoming tournament, but the team has let it known that they are ready and willing to face these challenges as they come and to compete to the fullest of their abilities in this year’s upcoming tournament.