Academic Bowl turns trivia into source of school pride

North Bergen High School junior Sam Sanker is a walking fountain of knowledge. After all, a year ago he was a contestant on the game show Jeopardy!” and made it to the national semifinals in the teen competition. He won $5,000, a new personal computer and a host of other prizes. So there was little doubt that when math teacher Nelly Velasquez was putting together her team for the 10th annual Hudson County Academic Bowl competition, Sanker not only had to be a part of the team, but he also had to serve as one of the captains. “I think the experience definitely helps,” said Sanker, who was also on North Bergen’s Academic Bowl team last year. “I can give the other players a background of what to expect in the questions.” North Bergen is one of 11 Hudson County schools participating in the month-long competition. It is also serving as the host for the competition as well. Other schools participating include defending champion Bayonne; Hoboken, Weehawken, Emerson, Union Hill, Lincoln, Memorial and Secaucus. For the first time, McNair Academic and Kearny have joined in the contest. The Academic Bowl began Wednesday and will continue for the next three weeks. During the sessions, each school will be pitted against another school in sort of a “Jeopardy!” format – which should be to Sanker’s liking. Each team consists of six players, four active players and two reserves. There are eight questions in each of six categories. Each question is worth a certain amount of points, with the harder questions earning more points. After 12 questions are asked, a reserve player can enter the contest. As soon as the entire grid of questions is asked, the points are added and a winner is declared. Sanker enjoys the group participation of the competition. “Jeopardy was strictly for individuals,” he said. “This is more for teams and I like the fact that everyone contributes.” After North Bergen Principal Paschal Tennaro and Superintendent of Schools Peter Fischbach greeted the students, Mayor Nicholas Sacco addressed them. “This is not going to be like ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'” said Sacco, referring to the popular ABC-TV game show hosted by Regis Philbin. “Nobody’s going to get rich here, and the questions are going to be harder.” The contents of the questions were not known by anyone before Wednesday’s opening round, but once the competitions began, they bordered on being ridiculously hard, even for an expert like Sam Sanker. “I would have to say that they were much tougher than last year,” Sanker said. Sanker said that North Bergen’s score in its first round against Kearny was another barometer of how tough the questions were. “We scored 310 this year and were way over 400 last year,” Sanker said. One question on current events was, “In 1972, this car became the most produced car in the world, with more than 15 million worldwide.” The answer was the Volkswagen Beetle. On entertainment, the students were asked, “Founded in 1913, this was the first stage actors’ union.” The answer? Equity. The students also had to know what spice is readily used on eggnog (answer: nutmeg) and what former New York Yankee slugger holds the record for grand slams in a season with six (answer: Don Mattingly, although some sports fanatics question the validity of that one). The questions later became much tougher, such as naming the southernmost active volcano in the world (Mount Erebus). “I had no clue,” Sanker said. Or, what fruit cannot be added to Jello because it will not gelatinize? Pineapple. But the best question was this doozy in the category of health and science: “In an alternating current circuit, this concept is used to characterize a passive circuit element. Analogous to resistance in direct current circuits, it is measured in ohms and its ratio of the voltage aptitude to the current aptitude. The phase difference between the voltage and current through it completes the description of this term.” The correct answer is impedance. “There was no way anyone was getting that one right,” Sanker laughed. Sanker said that there was a special feeling to this year’s tournament, considering that North Bergen is the host school. “Meeting new people and showing them around the school is a big bonus,” he said. “We want to make a good impression.” Velasquez, who is serving as the township’s coach as well as the host of the tournament, is happy that the tournament is being held at the school. “The teams all get together beforehand in the cafeteria, and we provide them with snacks,” she said. “It’s a chance for everyone to get together and know each other. And as a coach, we’ve prepped them with trial questions and given them a trial run, so they got a feel of what they needed to do.” “It’s really challenging and fun,” Sanker said. “And since we’re representing the school, there is a certain amount of school pride involved. We went out in a preliminary round last year. We just want to make a better showing this year.”