excerpt from Shield Academy's brochure (2013)

Shield Academy, founded in 1945 by Margaret Carter and Howard Stark, is a college preparatory school for the academically gifted. Teachers are selected from a pool of the most talented, from across the globe. Students are educated in many advanced fields such as biochemistry, metaphysics, computer engineering, communications, as well as one of the leading liberal arts programs in the nation.

excerpt from anonymous blog, detailing the rivalry between Shield Academy and Hydra Prep (2007)

Hydra Preparatory, founded in 1931 by Johann Schmidt (who is rumored to have been a Nazi sympathizer), is known as the underbelly of the academic world—at least in the tri-state area. Consistently producing sociopaths and psychopaths who, if not eventual arrested for some brutal crime, go on to head some of the biggest Fortune-500 companies on the Eastern seaboard.

Their quarrel with Shield Academy, the only other rigorous academic college preparatory in the area that is equal to Hydra, is well known and well documented. Spanning decades, their students have always found ways to antagonize and one up their counterparts. When Shield opened at a coed school, Hydra pushed through new regulations to allow female students to enroll at a discounted tuition. When Hydra won the championship football game in 1999, Shield students vandalized the school and stole their mascot, an octopus named, in a move of startling originality, Hydra. Hydra the cephalopod was never seen again. With Hydra alum Grant Ward ('01) joining Shield's faculty (see: /hydra-betrayal) this coming year is sure to be interesting.

Stay tuned.