CVHS students to be on Quiz Kids show

The Castro Valley Quiz Kids team competed in a televised academic competition on Sunday, Nov. 13.  The program will air on Saturday, Jan. 14 on the local television station KRON.

Quiz Kids is a game in which two teams, each consisting of three players, compete for points by answering trivia questions from a variety of subject areas.  The three main categories from which questions are chosen are liberal arts, natural sciences, and recent news.  With these categories, question topics can vary from ancient history to astronomy to pop culture. Each round has a different scoring system, and the team with the most points at the end of the last round wins the game.

Castro Valley has been competing in the Quiz Kids competition for the past few months with the help of advisor Dr. Deborah Yager.  Although Yager is considered the advisor for the team members, she admits that she was not the driving force behind the decision to create the group.

“It wasn’t me deciding; it was the students who decided.  My main job with them is getting them to and from competitions,” explained Yager.  “This is student-driven.  This is in them to do.  They really want this and they thrive on competition.”

In actuality, it was senior Bright Zhou, one of Yager’s former honors chemistry students and a current member of Yager’s Science Bowl Club, who took charge.  He researched the competition and assembled the team, explaining, “I had done Science Bowl before and, really, it’s an extension of that. Who doesn’t want to recreate the heroics of Ken Jennings or Watson?”

The two other members of the team are Travis Mattas and Holden Parks, both of whom achieved the recognition of being top scorers in a Quiz Kids tournament held on Nov. 5.  In most matches, Mattas, Parks, and Zhou have competed as the three team members, with senior Calvin Cheng as the alternate.  As Parks and Cheng were unavailable the day of the match, however, senior Seamus Guerin was recruited to take the third spot on the day of the televised match.

Mattas, Guerin, and Zhou met with Yager at Peninsula TV Station in San Carlos on the day of the competition.  The three were eager to represent CVHS against the Crystal Springs Gryphons, yet somewhat jittery about appearing on television.

“I was nervous about how my hair was looking!” Guerin said.  “I was confident about the competition, though.”

The competition began with both teams entering the filming studio to complete sound tests with microphones.  The audience in the studio was instructed on when to applaud, when to be silent, and how to behave during commercial breaks.

With a “5-4-3-2-1″ from the cameraman, the competition was quickly underway.  Questions and answers were fired back and forth between the host and the competitors until the last buzzer resounded through the studio with finality.

Zhou was very proud of his team’s performance, explaining, “There’s a certain thrill that comes from competing against some of the Bay Area’s nerdiest kids and occasionally being able to come out on top.”

In the end, the Trojans put up a valiant effort against the Gryphons.  Tune in to KRON on Jan. 14 to view the match and the results!