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A group of Southampton High School students will have their moment to shine as brainiacs on MSG Varsity, a Cablevision channel, on December 21.
Four Southampton students, and an alternate, went head to head with another team of students well-versed in trivia—a group from Commack High School—on a game show called “The Challenge,” according to a press release from Epoch 5 Public Relations in Huntington, a firm representing Cablevision. The show will air on December 21 at 6:30 p.m. on Cablevision channel 14, and on Saturday and Sunday on News 12 at 6:30 p.m.
“It was new experience, and I was expecting a good competition,” said Matt Miller, a student at Southampton High School and a member of the team. “I wasn’t disappointed—the game was really close.”
The students who participated—Matt, Eric Miller, Ricky Wesnofske, Davis King and alternate Julia Leef—noted that they could not divulge who won the game show, or go into the details of the questions they were asked. “We had questions on U.S. history, music, and sports,” Eric said.
Virginia McGovern, the academic advisor for the students participating in the show, added that “The Challenge” also had questions from pop culture, history, literature, science, and math. Fellow teacher Maria Gaizo-Clinton also worked as an academic advisor with the team.
If Southampton High School triumphed over Commack High School, the students will advance to the next round and will have an opportunity to become the Tri-State Challenge Champion, winning $10,000 for the school and $500 for each team member, according to the Epoch 5 press release.
Ms. McGovern said that the team of five students prepared arduously for the event by practicing after school with Ms. Gaizo-Clinton. “They watched former episodes of ‘The Challenge,’ looked at trivia sites online and answered Trivial Pursuit questions,” Ms. McGovern said.
She noted that some teachers at Southampton High School like to do trivia at lunchtime, and said that those teachers helped out by letting the students borrow books as well.
Eric said that as part of “March Madness” festivities, Southampton High School puts on a quiz bowl with five teams similar to “The Challenge.”
The four contestants from Southampton who filmed the show were selected out of a pool of 20, Ms. McGovern explained. She said that she and Ms. Gaizo-Clinton offered students a 50-question multiple choice test, with five sections on different topics and 10 questions in each.
About 20 juniors and seniors took the test, Ms. McGovern said, and about eight did exceptionally well.
“We then had them go head to head with the actual ‘Jeopardy’ buzzers,” Ms. McGovern said.
Ms. McGovern said that she and Ms. Gaizo-Clinton picked the five best out of the crop to form the team.
Southampton High School has participated in “The Challenge” before. About two years ago another team of Southampton students went against a team from Kings Park, Ms. McGovern said, but lost.
“The last time we did it, we didn’t win the first round,” Ms. McGovern said. “They had a math genius at Kings Park.”
Ms. McGovern noted schools larger than Southampton have quiz teams that are continually having academic challenges.
Jared Cotter, a semifinalist on the sixth season of “American Idol” and a songwriter, is the host of “The Challenge,” noted Peggy Kalia, an employee at Epoch 5. “He’s an exciting, charismatic young guy,” Ms. Kalia noted.
Ms. Kalia added that MSG Varsity is a channel dedicated strictly to high school sports and extracurricular activities in the greater metropolitan New York Area. The channel airs programming produced by Cablevision staff and high schools. It is only available to Cablevision subscribers, according to a press release.
“The Challenge” began on Long Island 13 years ago, and has since blossomed into a tri-state competition, according to the release. Teams from all of Long Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn, the lower Hudson Valley, as well as New Jersey and Connecticut, now participate.
The Southampton students filmed the show at studios in Manhattan in early November, Ms. McGovern said.
“It was good, and it was fun,” Ms. McGovern said. “The kids had a great time.”
She noted that there was a long back-up of filming at the studio, and the students had to wait more than three hours before the show aired.
“They got to see the workings of a TV studio, and that it was not all glitz and glamour,” Ms. McGovern said. “There was a lot of waiting around and doing nothing. But it was a positive experience overall.”
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