“With the passage of a resolution at their most recent Board of Education Meeting, The Lorain City Schools have accepted an invitation to join the Greater Cleveland Conference (GCC). The Titans will begin competition in the GCC starting in the 2025-2026 school year.”
From Brian Koury, Athletic Director at Lorain High School: “Lorain is very excited for this new opportunity. Most of the existing GCC schools were in Lake Erie League back when we originally joined, and we have competed against all of the schools in the GCC in non-league play in recent years so there is definitely a familiarity. This is going to be exciting for Lorain sports.”
From Jeff Cassella, Athletic Director at Mentor High School, current GCC President: “We are very happy that Lorain has accepted our invitation to join the Greater Cleveland Conference and look forward to what they will bring in both athletic competitions and district wide opportunities in the coming years. Lorain has a strong tradition and this partnership will strengthen our conference for years to come.”
Amherst students Mark Vitelli, Mort Wilson, and Aiden Workman
Amherst Marion L. Steele defeated Elyria High School on this week’s second semifinal broadcast of the Scholastic Games radio quiz show. The program has been heard weekly since January on WEOL (AM930 and FM 100.3) with sixteen area schools in the running for the county crown. Monday’s 440 to 210 victory advanced the Amherst team to compete in the program’s 34th county championship, to be broadcast next Monday, May 20th.
The winning team consisted of team captain Mark Vitelli, Mort Wilson, and Aiden Workman, who won the program’s “Standout Scholar Award.” The “Standout Scholar” is the student who contributed the most to his or her team as determined by scorekeepers. It includes a $50 prize each time it is awarded. It was Workman’s second such award this year, his first in the team’s quarterfinal win. Vitelli is also a former “Standout” winner. The Elyria team also boasts two former Standouts. Unfortunately one of them, Isaac Quast, winner in the team’s quarterfinal, was unable to attend the semifinal match. The other was team captain Anthony Schmitz. Rounding out the team this time for Elyria were Colin Morrison and Seth Frabotta.
Monday’s competition opened with the “Initial Round,” so named for two reasons, it is first, and in it, every answer begins with the same letter. It was “Q” this time, with Quincy, Quito, and Quantrill among the answers. It ended with a 40 to 40 tie. The Current Events round came next. Both teams did very well, but Steele had a perfect score ending the round with a 100 to 80 Amherst lead.
Third was the Theme Round, first of the “buzz-in rounds” giving advantage to a faster team. This time it was a challenging set of questions with two-word alliterative names and phrases for answers. The teams failed to respond with names of the novels “Captains Courageous” and “Billy Budd” and the nursery rhyme clue for Simple Simon, but scored with Corpus Christi, James Joyce, Woodrow Wilson and “Silent Spring” among others, advancing the score to Amherst 140, Elyria 110.
The fourth round consists of sequences of clues leading to each answer, An answer following only one clue can earn a team 50 points, with subsequent clues worth lesser amounts of 40, 30, 20 or 10 points. The first item was composer Stephen Sondheim. It advance to the 10 point clue, then Amherst’s Vitelli scored. The historic ironclad ship the Merrimack was the second subject and Vitelli jumped in again, scoring 40 points, The next set of clues were about the Galapagos islands. A forty-point buzz from Elyria provided Hawaii as an answer. Remaining clues went to Amherst and Workman scored after the 30-point clue. It happened again with clues about Norway. The 30-point clue mentioned the city of Bergen. A quick buzz came from Elyria, answering Sweden, followed by Amherst’s Workman with the correct answer for 20 points. The final item in the round, the artist Michelangelo, finally brought a score to Elyria, 20 points scored by Morrison.
It was a 230 to 130 lead for Steele entering the final round which is often the highest scoring. It’s more than nine minutes of toss-up and bonus questions. Unfortunately for Elyria, it was again dominated by Amherst, outscoring them by over 100 points, advancing the team to next week’s championship, which will air Monday, May 20th, from 5 to 6 p.m. The program will repeat the following Saturday from 10 to 11 a.m. and also be archived with the other broadcasts of the series at both weol.com and standoutscholars.com, the website of Standout Production Group which produces the quiz program.
Lorain County Public Health offers many services to help new and expectant mothers.
Danielle Benham, Community Outreach Specialist and Erin Murphy, Director of Population Health detailed the Neighborhood Navigation program that connects with moms through texting.
This week’s broadcast was the last of the quarterfinals of the Scholastic Games radio quiz show on WEOL (AM930 and FM 100.3). Vermilion High School joins Elyria, Avon Lake and Amherst Steele as semifinalists after its 430 to 140 victory over a strong academic team from Midview High School in Grafton. Vermilion’s team consisted of Aubree Kennedy, team captain Reagan Massey, and Stephen Stetz, who won the program’s “Standout Scholar Award,” an honor presented each week to the student who contributed the most to his or her team, as determine by scorekeepers. It includes a $50 prize on each program. In this year’s first round of competitions, Kennedy won the award for the team. For the first time in the broadcast’s thirty-four years, each of the four semifinalist teams include two Standout winners.
Competing for Midview were Kalen Dougall, team captain Zachary Janus, and Reuben Greenly. Both Janus and Greenly are past “Standout Scholar” winners. The teams were well matched through the first three of five rounds of questions, then Vermilion clearly emerged. In the first round, or “Initial Round,” all answers began with the same letter, in this case “T,” ranging from Margaret Thatcher to the Taj Mahol. It ended with a 50 to 40 point lead for Midview, but the second, a challenging Current Events Round, brought a 70 to 60 advantage to Vermilion. Round three is the first in which the quicker team to buzz in gets to answer first. It featured a Theme of “words with the letter X in them” from xenophobia to Nixon to calyx (the only missed answer). Midview bounced back, going into Round Four with a 120 to 100 lead.
The fourth round almost always ends with a substantial lead for one of the teams, and this one was no exception. It consists of sequences of clues leading to each answer, An answer following only one clue can earn a team 50 points, with subsequent clues worth lesser amounts of 40, 30, 20 or 10 points. The first set described Robert Oppenheimer, the subject of the most recent Oscar-winning movie. The first clues dealt with his early life and education. Vermilion’s Kennedy scored on the third clue adding 30 points to the team’s score. Then Stetz scored on the next three, earning “Standout” status. It was 50 points from the first clue about the city of Houston, 40 from the second clue about the Northwest Passage, then another 50 identifying the island nation of Malta.
The last series of clues in Round Four described President Chester A. Arthur. A “hail Mary” fifty-point buzz from Midview named Ulysses S. Grant, eliminating the team and giving remaining clues to Vermilion. Stetz scored at the 30-point level raising his tally alone in that round to 170 points. The team entered the final round with a 300 to 120 point lead. The fifth round has the highest scoring potential but was the Vermilion team that continued to outscore its opponents. Its domination of that round resulted in the lopsided final score. As semifinals begin, Vermilion will compete on the next program, on Monday, May 6th.
Per the official press release from the GCC:
