Personal finance team makes bank at national competition

Claire Weddle, News Editor and Jewelry Extraordinaire

May 26, 2015

Courtesy of Claire Weddle
(From left to right) Seniors Kenneth Yu, Christina Mao, Claire Weddle, Akash Shukla, and AP Economics teacher Micheal Clark cash out with their first place win in the national personal finance competition

On May 22 seniors Christina Mao, Akash Shukla, Claire Weddle and Kenneth Yu won first place at the Missouri Council on Economic Education personal finance national competition in Kansas City. They competed against 22 other teams from different states across the country.

AP Economics teacher Michael Clark coached the team and helped them prepare for the national competition. Mao shared how the team practiced before nationals.

“We went to Mr. Clark’s room every day to take practice tests, answer quiz bowl questions and get more material that we had to study,” Mao said.

There were three rounds of quizzes in the competition. In the first two rounds, team members completed the quiz on their own, and the three highest scores of the four team members were counted for that round. During the third round, the team collaborated and completed the quiz together, counting that score three times for that round. The top two teams at the end of the third round were Texas and Ohio. They competed in a quiz bowl to determine the national champion.

The quiz bowl became intense when all 30 questions had been asked, and the score was tied ten to ten between Ohio and Texas. A tie breaker question was asked, and Texas was the first to buzz, and team members answered the question correctly. The team began to hug each other as they realized that had just won.

“I was really relieved when we won because we were tied with Ohio during the quiz bowl round, and all that pressure during the tie breaker question was pretty stressful,” Mao said.

Besides being the national champions, all members of the Texas team had the highest individual scores overall. Mao had the highest score, Yu had the second highest, Weddle had the third highest and Shukla had the fifth highest.

Team members ended their senior year with the national champion title for personal finance thanks to the coaching and guidance of their teacher Michael Clark.