Academic Team

And this year, it's hard to overstate just how well the Edgewood Academic Team performed. Not only did they easily capture an overall season championship, they also dominated the one-game county championship (and remained undefeated the entire time).

That's not the only success that the team has experienced. After the monumental victory at the county championship in November, three Edgewood seniors, Phoenix Boggs, Nikil Iyer, and Jon Wang, were named to the six-member Team Brevard to represent the county at the state competition in March. That means that half of the Academic Team that represents Brevard is made up of Edgewood students.

None of this success would have been possible without the brilliant coaching of Mr. Sean Johnston. After steadily improving his coaching skills over the past seven years, Johnston is now fully in his element when it comes to coaching. But Johnston emphasizes that it's not just his coaching that has contributed to the team's success.

“I feel like I have improved as a coach primarily because of good suggestions from current and previous players, but most of the preparation comes from the other students,” Johnston said. “When this is combined with the level of talent in this year's senior class and the fact that they’re constantly learning from each other, it made for an incredibly elite team.”

This incredibly elite team never would have been able to come together, however, without the help from a few incredibly dedicated and diligent individuals. Amongst the many cancellations of the pandemic, last year’s season was one of the many victims of cancellation. In order to ensure that this wouldn’t happen again, Captain Nikhil Iyer, 12, made sure to let the Commissioner of Education know that he wanted this year’s season to happen.

“I just bugged them until they told us whether the competition was happening or not,” Iyer said. “I would keep calling the office every day in the morning. I would get redirected and sit there for twenty minutes. To get a response, it took me about two weeks.”

But just because there wasn’t a season last year doesn’t mean that the team wasn’t doing anything. Captain Phoenix Boggs, 12, revealed that what the team did during the time in which there would have been a season helped them prepare for this year’s season.

“Edgewood kept practicing during that year when we didn’t have a season, and we kept practicing at the beginning of this year, even though we didn’t even know if we would have a season,” Boggs said. “I think that set us apart from other teams that weren’t practicing at that time, and I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve been able to do so well this season.”

The team’s practice definitely paid off, as each of the team’s captains were able to earn themselves a position on Team Brevard. Along with one West Shore player, one Holy Trinity player, and one Cocoa player, the three Edgewood players will represent Brevard County at the state level against other county teams, with each team competing for the chance to be the #1 academic team in the state of Florida. After learning that he had landed himself a spot on Team Brevard, Captain Jon Wang, 12, felt like he had come a long way, since he had joined the team during his sophomore year.

“It’s great,” Wang said. “It feels like the work that I’ve been doing has finally paid off.”

While the three captains were heavy lifters on the team this year, they weren’t the only strong players. With a good crop of young and upcoming talent, the future looks bright for the Edgewood academic team.

“I would say the people that I think make strong players are people like Thanmay Kumar, Andrew Matsoukis, Abbie Shepard, and Wisper Reynolds,” Boggs said. “We had a team 2 scrimmage before break that really revealed to me that the team was really moving in a positive direction and that we are going to be successful in future years, which is something that is very important to me. I am very optimistic about the future of the team for both team 1 and team 2.”