1st Annual 2022 Westchester Geo Competition held at Hackley School
On May 21, 2022, three Hackley Juniors—Advith Sharma, Graham Adams, and Noah Nager—organized and led the Finals of the 1st Annual 2022 Westchester Geo Competition on the Hilltop under the guidance of Upper School teacher Mr. Tuo Liu.
Both Advith and Graham are former top 10 finishers at the middle school state finals of the New York National Geo Bee Finals, and were disappointed to see that the competition was permanently discontinued in 2021 by National Geographic. Advith recognized that many curious students with a passion to learn facts about the world grow in confidence after fun competitions like this, especially if they may not find that same confidence in other areas of school work at a young age. Together, Advith and Graham decided to launch the 1st Annual 2022 Westchester Geo Competition on campus, giving students around the region an opportunity to have fun and compete while covering political and physical geography, foreign cultures and indigenous groups, global current events and history, languages, economies and exports, tourist attractions, wildlife, and fun facts, ranging from renewable energy and airports to film and music!
Advith, Graham, and Noah worked to put together a series of rounds and questions that would culminate in the finals held at Hackley, fostering students’ curiosity about the world around them. Across all participating schools in Westchester County, approximately 2,000 middle school students took the online preliminary quiz. Following that, schools invited the top 15 scorers to an in-school final to select the top five. The five students from each school were then invited to Hackley for the finals, which consisted of initial preliminary rounds and an ultimate buzzer-based game to crown the winners! The upper schoolers also ran a fun team-based collaborative Geoguessr Competition for all participating students.
Next year, Advith, Graham, and Noah hope to expand to even more students and schools around the region.
Congratulations as well to the Hackley Middle School students for a fantastic showing in the finals of the 2022 Westchester Geo Competition. Inkosi B. ’26 earned 2nd place overall, William S. ’28 earned 6th place overall, and Ben I. ’26 and Theo A. ’27 were finalists.
