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Valwood Upper School Reclaims Top Spot in Battle of the Books
HAHIRA, GA – January 13, 2026 — The Valwood upper school Battle of the Books team are the State Champs. The competition took place on Tuesday, January 13, via Zoom. The Valiants move on to compete in the SECIS (Southeastern Conference of Independent Schools) Battle of the Books regional championship.
Valwood’s team has competed in the GISA competition for three years, bringing home a 1st and 2nd place finish. The team, composed of eleven students, placed first, edging out Bulloch Academy by a single point.
Participants include seniors Haley Hardy, William Holloway, Destyn Lain, and Brody Burch; juniors Carolyn Griner and Julia Soshnik; and sophomores Isabelle Fann, Carrigan Collins, Mary Blake McLeod, Lillie Moore, and Sara Daugharty. The faculty advisors are Valwood Upper School English teachers Linden Hammett and Kim Teasley.
Battle of the Books is a voluntary reading incentive program for students in grades five through twelve. The competition encourages students to read challenging books and have fun while competing with their peers.
At the start of the school year, students dive into a rigorous reading list, to prepare for this highly competitive academic tournament. On competition day, they demonstrate their knowledge and teamwork in head-to-head rounds against other GISA schools, answering questions about setting, characters, plot events, and identified specific quotations from the assigned texts. They had thirty seconds to answer each question and participated in a total of four rounds in the competition. Valwood’s students each read anywhere from six to 11 texts from the 15-book list that includes titles such as Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Miller’s The Crucible.
Teasley, an 11-year teaching veteran, said, “I love this competition because it encourages all of our students to read more and collaborate with one another about the stories that shape the American canon.”
Hammett, the lead sponsor, added, “When students are excited about reading, it changes the level of engagement in the classroom. Even people who are not traditional ‘bookworms’ love this competition and participate enthusiastically.”
The Valwood English department carefully curates a wide selection of texts for literary instruction, but the participants of the Battle of the Books competition noted how thrilled they were to be challenged in a different way for their reading accomplishments.
