by Andy Ortiz

The day that the St. John Bosco and St. Joseph’s High Schools’ World Scholar’s Cup team has been waiting for is finally here: starting this Friday is the World Scholar’s Cup Tournament of Champions (TOC).

For those that may not know, the World Scholar’s Cup (WSC) is a worldwide academic decathlon competition. It is a competition in which teams of three engage in collaborative events involving debates and game shows. 

From free alpaca plushies being given out during the rounds to sharing notes and knowledge with scholars across the world, WSC is something worth committing to.

“Without WSC, I wouldn’t have met two of my closest teammates who soon became friends, Josue [Sanchez] and Alexander [Estrella],” said St. Joseph’s junior Jaquelyn Reyes. 

The Bosco and St. Joseph’s WSC team was founded and used to be coached by previous Assistant Principal of Academic Affairs, Mr. Edgar Salmingo, who has since left Bosco. Currently, Bosco parents Mrs. Fatima Gutierrez and Ms. Mayra Garza are the temporary coaches for this season.

“I am a natural teacher and enjoy helping students grow and learn,” said Mrs. Gutierrez. “So guiding students from this long list of prompts that WSC puts out to learning the material and using it to write creatively and to formulate claims for debates is an interesting process for me.”

The TOC is the final round in the WSC, where the 1000 winners of the global rounds gather to the beautiful campus of Yale University, an Ivy League school, to compete in the hardest events.

Scholars that are participating in this year’s TOC had to first prove their abilities in their local regional round in April to then move on to a whole new country in the global round, where the competition began to heat up, as they qualified for the TOC. 

The TOC features only the best and academically inclined scholars in the world, all coming from many different countries and regions. This round also features the most rigorous events and challenges, making it the most difficult of the rounds. 

TOC also serves as a beautiful wrapup of the WSC season, celebrating the experiences of the scholars who managed to qualify from the global rounds and the learning they’ve demonstrated. 

“I joined the program my freshman year, when at the time I had no idea the program even existed. However, after the round, I discovered that the competition was very fun and enticing and wanted to continue the program to see where it led me,” said Bosco junior Josue Sanchez. 

The rounds of the WSC focus around four main events: team debate, collaborative writing, scholar’s challenge, and scholar’s bowl. With the exception of the scholar’s challenge, each of these events focus on teamwork and critical thinking, both of those skills being the heart and soul of the competition.

“Debates give scholars a chance to showcase their listening and speaking skills in real time. It helps them work collaboratively, be organized and creative,” said Mrs. Gutierrez.

This year’s WSC curriculum focuses on the themes of “Reconstructing the Past.” As the name implies, the scholars learn about reconstructions of historical events and time periods, through concepts such as living history museums, recreations of famous artworks and circumstances behind notorious crime scenes, among many others.

The content also focuses a lot on the history of music, journalism and past historical figures and events. All of the four aforementioned events take prompts and questions from the curriculum, so in order to place very high, scholars will have to master their knowledge of the content and have great chemistry with their teammates.

“I really like thinking about the role current technology has in creating art and the idea around what constitutes art and who owns or authors a specific piece or work, especially if the original creator has passed or if there is a reboot,” said Mrs. Gutierrez.

In the competition, many students are obviously very stressed about how they will do, so the WSC provides each and everyone with their own alpaca plushies.

“The meaning behind the stuffed alpacas was to emphasize the sentiment that you can always look to the stuffed alpacas as a source of comfort during the round, as a way to represent that not all in life is supposed to have such a serious, strict meaning all the time,” said Josue. 

The challenge that the TOC will bring will no doubt prove to be a big ordeal for our Bosco and St. Joseph’s WSC team. But they have spent a long time preparing for this event and hope to do their best in this upcoming competition.