AP Economics teacher Tyson Smith took eight teams to Des Moines on April 10 to compete in the Adam Smith Divison State Challenge on April 10. Two weeks prior, students taking AP Econ class divided themselves into teams of four and took a qualifying test. The top scores from three of the four people were added and compared with everyone in Iowa. While this competition was open to the entire state, West dominated all ten qualifying spots and sent eight teams to State.
The state qualifiers arrived at the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) and took three tests throughout the day: Microeconomic with 25 questions, Macroeconomic with 12 questions and an international, current events economics test as a team. Once points are added, the top two teams compete in a buzzer face-off to qualify for Nationals.
Debt Daddies (Robert Stong ’24, Richard Yang ’25, Holden Rebich ’25 and Martin Hoeger-Pinto ’25) and Dominant Strategy (Emery Crawford ’25, Brady Olson ’25, Ajay Bharanidhar ’25 and Thomas Gibson ’25) placed top 2 and ended the day off by racing to answer 10 questions correctly in a buzzer final. After a close match, Dominant Strategy won 10-9, securing a spot to Nationals in New York City and a 150-dollar cash prize each.
