On January 2, students went up against teachers in a difficult trivia competition at Linganore High School (LHS) to prepare for the Academic tournaments. The teachers vs. student trivia competition started at 2:45 p.m.
The first annual contest featured categories such as math, movies, and the Maryland history category which was said to be a category in the tournaments. This trivia competition was held for the purpose of preparing students on the LHS academic team going into the 2025 season of the Academic Tournament, in which students go head-to-head with other school teams in rounds of trivia.
The Academic tournament starts in January and goes through February, with matches every week. The first match was held on January 10, with more scheduled throughout the month.
The students have been preparing since November when they began meeting to practice. A lot went into their preparation, even outside of their scheduled practices.
Charlie Pearson, a member of the LHS academic team, provided more insight into how the team has prepared for competition.
We take “a lot of quizzes on “Sporcle,” a lot of studying like that, and we do a lot of questions during our practices,” Pearson said.
Another member of the school’s academic team, Graham Smarick, shared
“I show up to practice, and I just read a lot; I read Wikipedia,” Smarick said.
Even with all the preparation students put in before the teachers vs student competition, the teacher team was able to end the first round with a win, and from there they stayed in the lead.
By the sixth round the students team had closed the gap, but the contest ended with a final score of teachers 36 tp students 25. The experience of the teachers won out against the students’ hard work.
Pearson shared his response to the loss.
“I feel less confident than I did before, but that doesn’t mean I’m not confident,” Pearson said.
With the matches coming up, Smarick said: “It’s going to be a different situation tomorrow, I mean, there will be three teams … This is the first time [competition] for a lot of people [on the team].”
Hopefully this match and the categories covered in the tournament will have the intended effect to make the team more prepared for the future.