Exeter Clubs Bring Home Wins
Courtesy of MUN
By: Stacy Chen, Sheala Iacobucci, Anna Kim
Despite being off campus and learning remotely, clubs are still participating in (and dominating) online competitions. Interscholastic conferences in which students meet and demonstrate their hard work on a given subject are longtime staple of Exeter extracurriculars. Now, through Zoom and preparation adjustments, these conferences continue, giving students the opportunity to compete and win in the ways they know best.
Recently, Exeter’s physics club won the US Invitation Young Physics Tournament, a prestigious physics competition rooted in a debate style format, for the third time in four years. Each team was given multiple problems, and each problem was experimented on and culminated in a 10 minute presentation. After the teams presented their problems, opposing schools had an opportunity to ask questions that, as upper Neil Chowdhury said, “challenge one of our fundamental assumptions.”
While the virtual format created some difficulties, the team was able to complete experiments remotely and discuss the results together to create presentations.
Upper and team captain Alexander Morand said, “There were so many good moments and successes for the team... camaraderie all through the day of the competition is what led Exeter to win. Each team challenged us through lines of reasoning we did not ourselves adopt, yet we emerged confident in our physics after every round because of our thorough preparation and exposure to debate from Harkness classes.”
Upper Alex Ecker participated in the tournament as well. “We were able to explore what knowledge we do know from the past and apply it practically to the different problems in order to come up with cool solutions and explorations into the actual topics themselves.” he said “Like always, we're all really excited and interested in the field of physics. So it was...a lot of fun to meet over Zoom, and go over the problems and different ideas that we had together.”
The Academy’s Model United Nations was another club that participated in an online competition. Spanning across four days, MUN competed at Yale’s annual Model UN conference, better known as YMUN, and earned the title of “Outstanding Large Delegation.” Although this year’s conference was virtual, Exeter’s delegation prepared diligently for the event.
Lower Haakon Kohler recalled the helpful preparation zooms run by co-heads Nahla Owens and Phil Horrigan. “We did a lot of prep beforehand, both in the weeks leading up and the night before.” he said. “There were some late night zooms at nine on Tuesday, which we used to hang out, talk and kind of write prepping speeches.”
Other delegates also acknowledged the team building done beforehand, which made the success of Exeter’s delegation much more impactful. Lower Sreesa Virinchi described the major highlight: “Obviously there’s individual awards for each individual committee and students, but then there's also an award for each large delegation, which is like the group of students from each school, if there's continued excellence throughout all of them. I think it was just really testament to the hard work, not only of the delegates and students from Exeter, but also the co-heads and how dedicated they were to helping us prepare thoroughly for the conference.” he said. “That was a powerful moment.”
Online competitions have offered another outlet for students to continue with their extracurricular passions and connect with their peers. Though the gatherings have taken a different form this year, the enthusiasm and community they encourage have remained strong as ever.
Courtesy of Physics Club
