WOODS CROSS—It’s not just Olympians who took Gold in February. Woods Cross High School’s Academic Olympiad team took its place on the podium by taking first in the Battle for Olympus challenge at the Academic Olympiad event held at Utah State University last month. 

“It was very exciting,” said Advisor Jaden Stewart. “It was the first year any of the kids participated in it because last year they didn’t hold it because of COVID.”

The team is made up of nine students, she said. “There’s a mix of juniors and seniors. Usually we’ve had more seniors but this year it’s about half and half. If they do it as juniors they’ll usually do it as seniors as well.”

The Olympiad starts with a written test in the morning, said Stewart. “It covers history, English, social studies, math, etc. then Battle for Olympus which is a team trivia challenge.”

Students are invited to be on the team, she said. “ACT scores are one of the big factors we look at because the test is more difficult than the ACT. We also look at the classes they’ve taken, the level of math and AP classes, students we feel are really well prepared to do well on the test and trivia.”

Woods Cross Junior Spencer Marx participated in the event for the first time. “It was really nice to be recognized by USU,” he said. “There’s a lot of emphasis on sports so it was cool to get recognition in academia.”

Trivia was impossible to prepare for because the questions are random, Marx said. “Reading over what I’ve learned over the years was helpful. For the written test I studied like I did for the ACT because it’s structured like that. I’m kind of into math and science so I had prior knowledge.”

“We prepared Wednesday mornings during late start,” said junior Rex Green. “We studied questions from past Olympiads, current events and went over the ACT. The test is a lot harder than the ACT or SAT.”

It was very, very fun but stressful, he said. “You couldn’t rely on anyone else. It was cool to apply what I’ve learned from other classes and talk to people from other schools who have common interests.”

“I know some people were nervous,” said Marx. “I’m an extrovert by nature so I was pretty relaxed and not too nervous. It was a really fun experience to get to know other people who are interested in the same things I am.”λ