The Online Magazine of the Academic Games Leagues of America
| AGLOA News & Notes |
Student’s Perspective | Down Memory Lane | Past AGazines |
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The 2013 AGLOA National Tournament will take place April 26-29 in Charlotte, NC. Details about the tournament can be found on the National Tournament page. |
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Events across the AGLOA leagues during the next month:
If your league’s events are not listed, please send us your schedule. |
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Nationals Qualifying Rules – V The AGLOA Board has asked leagues to submit their rules—all within the AGLOA guidelines—for determining their Nationals qualifiers. Over the course of this tournament year, we will share their procedures with you. You can compare your league’s rules to others. Beaver County (PA) Academic Games League Only those players qualifying at a BCAGL tournament in any one of the games shall Earning Qualification:
Points will be awarded in this manner: Cube Games (Three rounds):
Cube Games (Two rounds):
Reading Games:
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A 6th-Grader’s Experience at Nationals 2012 The following essay was written as a school assignment at St. Lawrence Elementary School in Utica, MI by Mary Wright, daughter of AGLOA Board Member Steve and Sandy Wright. On our way to the Academic Games National Tournament in West Virginia, my sister and I were very excited. Little did we know that the next few days would be the most memorable of our lives. The tournament was in Wheeling, a city in part of the Appalachian Mountains, and it took six or seven hours to get there. The tournament was an awesome experience for lots of reasons.  Steve & Mary Wright When we arrived it was quite dark. My Mom woke us before we pulled in so we could carry our stuff out of the car. Lynn and I looked out the window and saw a deer right in front of the car! We slept in a hotel nearby because we couldn’t use the chalet my Dad (our team’s coach) rented for our team to live in during the tournament. I helped our parents pick rooms for the team, we waited excitedly for everyone else. Everyone got there around the same time. I showed them the Hill of Challenges, a steep hill dotted with trees with a carpet of dead pine needles. Everyone climbed it and slid down. It was extremely fun. Afterward, we rolled down the hills next to the chalet. But after Darian and I saw some…droppings on one of the hills, we checked the other, steeper hills for poop, and found none. Whew! The next day the first game we had to play was Presidents. We had to wait in the hallway for forever. It was crowded there. Everyone was nervous, but I totally freaked. My Dad took me aside to calm me down. When I came back we didn’t have to wait much longer; after Presidents, I was much calmer. The next couple of days passed quickly. We played the rest of the games and when we got back on the day of the awards ceremony, my Dad told us we won second place in Presidents, second in World Events, and fifth in Propaganda. I then learned that I won second place individually in the country in Presidents! At the awards ceremony they called out the winning teams and the teams received a gold, silver or bronze plaster statuette of The Thinker. When the announcer called my name, I was buzzing with excitement as I walked up. The announcer shook my hand and congratulated me. When he gave me my Thinker, I was ecstatic. Then, I had to go to a lady who put a name plate on the Thinker that said, “Second Place Presidents.” We went back to the chalet late into the night. The next day, Lynn, my teammates Daniel, Peyton, Nick, Conner, Mrs. Weingartz (a chaperone) and I went paddle boating on the lake. After that we went back to the chalet and then left West Virginia. The tournament was fun and we worked hard, but it was totally worth it. My Dad said in a hundred years, we would still be the first St. Lawrence Academic Games team. |
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Down Memory Lane In the winter of 1967, Allegheny County (PA) established the first interscholastic Academic Games league with play in Equations, Propaganda, and Democracy. The second national tournament in the spring of 1967 in Fort Lauderdale, FL included Democracy. In the game, players form a mini-legislature. Each player is dealt cards, each of which is a law that must be passed. Players must horse trade for votes because the winner of the round is the player who gets the most bills passed. The high school finals that year included seven players who had competed in the game locally in Pennsylvania and Florida and a player from New Orleans playing for the first time. As in Congress, players would promise to vote for another player’s bill in return for his vote for their bills. Then you double-cross the other player who voted for your bill by not voting for his so that it doesn’t pass. Since none of the players knew the New Orleans boy, they didn’t renege on their promises to him. So he ended up winning the championship. In 1968, Democracy was replaced by Robert Allen’s new game, Ameri-EuroCard (forerunner of World Events). |