AGazine, March 2014

News and Notes

Events across the AGLOA leagues during the next month:

To see all of our of upcoming events, visit our Calendar page. If your league’s events are not listed, please send us your schedule.

Farewell to FLAG

Diana Wieberg founded the Forsyth County League of Academic Games (FLAG) in 2004 after she moved to the northern suburbs of Atlanta from New Orleans, where she had coached Academic Games for many years and received AGLOA’s Outstanding Educator Award in 1991.

With the support of her principal, Dr. Janet Reid, Diana taught the games to her students at Sharon Elementary School and brought ten students to the national tournament at Kissimmee, FL, that year.

The league expanded in 2005 to include Settles Bridge Elementary and Riverwatch Middle School. Twenty-five students traveled to Baton Rouge for the 2005 AGLOA National Tournament. FLAG made their presence known by winning 20 trophies and medals at the tournament.

When the original players reached Middle Division and then high school, they were able to continue to play thanks to the coaching of Adrian Prather, who played at Renaissance High School in Detroit and moved to the Atlanta area to work for UPS. He coached the players who moved up to Junior and Senior Divisions. The unique feature of the league was that players participated as individuals apart from their schools.

When Diana retired from teaching, the pipeline dried up, and the number of players inevitably dwindled. Still, FLAG continued thanks to Adrian’s effort and leadership from the older players, three of whom won Outstanding Senior Awards—Eryn Howard (2011), Megan Moore (2013), and Lucy Yang (2013)—an honor that Adrian earned in 1997.

In the meantime, Adrian followed in Diana’s footsteps by winning an Outstanding Educator Award in 2003.

The following letter was recently sent by Adrian Prather to the players who had participated in the Forsyth County League of Academic Games (FLAG):

After nine years, we have come to the decision that FLAG will be closing. As much as we love the games and the teaching, we have come to a point that we have to stop and focus on other things. It was best to stop everything at this time, versus tryying to and attend Nationals and make the next three months even busier than they are already going to be. It is best we end the program, at this time. […]

I cannot tell you know much I enjoyed our relationship over the past nine years. The players of this league were the first people I met when I moved to Atlanta. Your efforts and your drive kept me wanting to teach you more and do the best I could to give you the best experience possible in FLAG. I hope you enjoyed each practice, meeting, and tournament as much as I.

We are not moving away, just moving to another chapter in our lives. We hope to hear about your many successes and occasional bumps in the road in the future. I will try and make it up there when I can, just to check on the students and parents. We are still a family, even if I will not see you every Wednesday night.

We hope to see as many of the parents as possible on Wednesday, to thank you for letting us work with your students. Without the kids, there is no FLAG.

Thank you all for everything,

– Adrian Prather

Down Memory Lane

Chris Biehl is the current basketball coach at Brother Martin High School in New Orleans. He played Academic Games at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie, LA. As a sophomore in 1988, Chris participated in the annual Mu Alpha Theta Convention in Baton Rouge where he won the Equations championship against students from all high school grades.

He gave the scoresheet from his final match to his mother, who put it in a scrapbook she was keeping about her son. A few years ago, Mrs. Biehl gave Chris the scrapbook. Our of curiosity, he went back to check what the final score was from the match, but as he was reminiscing about the match the name of his opponent caught his eye.

The, then, senior from Baton Rouge High School was “Bobby Jindal”—the Governor of Louisiana since 2008. Jindal is an aspirant for national office in the Republican Party.