Hundreds of questions later, the two top teams of eighth-graders were separated by just nine points, with Northwestern Lehigh edging Palmerton in the finale of the 26th Academic Eighth Competition, held Wednesday at Northwestern.

The annual event has been renamed the Kern Klassic to honor the late Janet Kern, who taught English at Northern Lehigh School District for 35 years. She was active in ACE since its beginning, serving as adviser while she was a teacher, and acting as moderator for the competition after her retirement.She passed away Nov. 26, 2014. Tamaqua School District English teacher Alisa Kemmerer served as moderator this year.The competiton included teams of six eighth-graders from eight schools: Northwestern Lehigh, Northern Lehigh, Palmerton, Panther Valley, Lehighton, Catasauqua, Jim Thorpe and Tamaqua. Palmerton had advanced by beating Tamaqua, the third-place team, by one point.Jim Thorpe finished fourth.Each match consists of three rounds. During the first round, team members can confer before answering. In the second round, no conferencing is allowed and team members respond to questions using buzzers.In the third round, the questions are worth two points instead of one, and two points are subtracted for incorrect answers.It's a double-elimination competition, and Palmerton came into the finals needing to beat Northwestern Lehigh twice to win overall. They almost did it, winning the first three-round match by a 32-31 score.Northwestern jumped out to a big lead in the final match, winning the first round 10-0; after the second round Palmerton had narrowed the gap to 23-18.The third-round action was so fast that scorekeepers had trouble keeping up with the points changes.The students fielded questions in a wide range of topics, including history, geography, science, math, literature and grammar.