Schools
White Plains High School Crowned Tri-State Challenge Champ
White Plains High School's academic team takes the top prize on MSG Varsity's TV quiz show, The Challenge.
It’s not everyday you walk away from a battle of wits with a $10,000 check that needs its own seat on the train ride home. For the White Plains High School academic team, however, winning the 2011 Tri-State Challenge Championship seemed like a routine win in the course of a marvelous season that tallied another 109.
“It’s weird to think that winning [the tournament] is out of the ordinary,” said junior Eric Smiley, 17, regarding the televised victory. “We don’t base our whole year off this win.”
Smiley’s teammates agree. Despite watching each of their wins throughout the course of the tournament on MSG Varsity’s fourteenth annual "The Challenge" TV quiz show for the last three months—the eclectic bunch admitted the real reward lies in the pleasure of competing.
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“For a weird bunch of people who know a bunch of random things, we have fun,” said junior and current team captain Adam Jaffe, 17, who plans to compete again next year.
The varsity academic team, known simply as the "A-team", is indeed jovial on their downtime. For instance, for the group’s annual “Night at the Movies” end-of-year celebration, they settled on "Spinal Tap," and their sense of camaraderie is evidenced by rapid-fire quips and inside jokes.
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On the competition floor, however, Jaffe, Smiley and teammates Alec Johnsson, Jens Sannerud and Aneesh Bhattacharya sport poker faces so intense, they merited a spry remark by The Challenge host and former "American Idol" contender Jared Cotter during the opening minutes of the final match against Long Island’s Kellenberg Memorial High School.
“They look like they still mean business,” said Cotter.
The A-team is the third Westchester squad to earn top honors on "The Challenge" in the four years county teams have competed in the tournament. Les Roby, the team’s advisor and math teacher at White Plains High School, acknowledges the fierce competition at the county level.
“We’re dealing with other very talented schools,” says Roby, who has advised the team for 22 years and hopes for two more decades. “Still, it’s more about participating and visiting new places. We keep busy but do it to enjoy ourselves.”
In this case, the A-team traveled an hour south to midtown Manhattan and competed alongside 183 other high schools on a flashy set at Hotel Pennsylvania.
The overachievers didn’t let these distractions or their fairytale win streak get to their heads.
“I don’t think we were expecting to win,” said Alec Johnsson, 18, the team’s lone senior and class salutatorian. Johnsson will enroll at Haverford College in the fall and plans to major in Comparative Literature.
Jaffe echoed his sentiments.
“[Kellenberg] had beaten us in a tournament in Long Island. It really just came down to us being faster in the third quarter.”
Like a basketball game, tournament matches are divided into four quarters where teams are asked questions dealing with any of the major academic disciplines in various timed and untimed formats.
Indeed, the score was nail-bitingly close halfway through the championship match, with Kellenberg up by just ten points. However, Aneesh opened up the floodgates at the start of the third quarter after nailing a question about Shetland wool, ponies and sheepdogs.
The comeback run gave White Plains a 360-320 victory.
“It’s been an amazing run for White Plains High School and we congratulate the team on its victory,” said MSG Varsity General Manager Theresa Chilianis. “[The station], the families and everyone at White Plains High School are extremely proud of this accomplishment.”
The team stood shoulder to shoulder amidst blasts from the confetti canons, at which point Smiley recalls “jumping back”, allowing the team to ease up and soak in the moment.
It didn’t take the bunch long to experience the side effects of fame. Months before last night’s episode even aired, the guys had already amassed some female admirers via Facebook.
“We came home and received Facebook friend requests from girls attending a school we’d beaten,” said Jaffe. “By the time we accepted, they had uploaded a photo of ours and commented on it amongst themselves maybe 200 times!”
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