After beating out other schools in the region through an online test, the RBHS personal finance team is one of the two top teams in the region that will compete at the state level tomorrow. Seniors Jonathan Ackmann, Jacob Freyermuth, Dima Rozenblat and Charles Shang beat out other RBHS students earlier in the year for a spot on the team.
“I know that the state competition consists of a multiple-choice test that each team member takes individually,” senior Dima Rozenblat said. “If we do well enough to be in the top two, then we compete in a quiz bowl [style] format to determine the champion.”
The four will take multiple rounds of written tests tomorrow morning. Tests are usually 25-30 questions long and ask about material learned in personal finance, ranging from economics to budgeting, investing to insurance.
“I think that we have a chance to do very well,” Rozenblat said. “Last year, the Rock Bridge team won state and nationals, so we have experience as a school. We’ve also done a lot of studying to prepare.”
The national championship team last year also placed first in state two years ago, and members of the team this year are looking forward to repeating it again. Preparation is something that led last year’s team to winning nationals, so it is no surprise that the team is putting in hard work in order to have another state championship and move onto the national level. When it comes down to it, the RBHS team this year has a secret weapon.
“Drive,” Rozenblat said. “We are all really motivated this year after we didn’t perform as well as we thought we could’ve last year. We [study] a lot, and we work as a team to make sure everybody understands every concept that we need to know.”
By Carleigh Thrower
Additional reporting by Daphne Yu