The Bromfield School has recently been selected by local news station WGBH along with 19 other Eastern Massachusetts high schools to compete on its televised High School Quiz Show, which will begin airing in March.
According to a press release from WGBH, “The producers of High School Quiz Show selected schools with consideration given to location, size, diversity, and the commitment of a team coach.” The press release goes on to say that Bromfield was among more than 70 teams that applied.
Says WGBH producer Hillary Wells, “To make it fair—and fun—we wanted a complete representation of schools in Massachusetts. The participating schools range from large to small in size, from urban to suburban, from charter schools to public. The initial match-ups between the schools will be chosen randomly, with team names pulled from a hat.”
“We found out about the competition through a letter that the superintendent got last spring that invited all the schools to apply,” explains faculty adviser Michael McGarty. “All you had to do was send an e-mail with a certain bit of information. I didn’t hear anything, then in September I got an e-mail saying we had been accepted as one of the 21 schools.”
McGarty has been the adviser for a tremendously successful nationally-qualified Bromfield Academic Bowl Quiznet team over the years. Yet interestingly, the WGBH show has not included other perennial powers in that competition, such as Concord-Carlisle or Needham. Besides Bromfield, none of the other 20 schools invited had existing teams. The producers of the show know McGarty and Bromfield and have even asked for input and feedback on how the competition will run.
“They are still playing around with the format, but the way they have it now is they have the 20 teams matched up into 10 games,” explains McGarty. “You play the 10 games and you either win or lose your game; then they pick four of the 10 winners with the highest number of points.”
The competition doesn’t operate like the NCAA basketball tournament, where winners of every game face off against each other; even if a team wins, it is not guaranteed to advance.
“If you get two really good schools playing against each other, their point values are going to be lower because they will be taking points away from each other,” explains McGarty. “However, if you get a really good school playing against a really bad school, their point values will go through the roof. Those four winning teams will then play four teams from Western Massachusetts for the state winner.” The four teams from Western Massachusetts are from public station WGBY’s similar competition program, As Schools Match Wits.
The show will be unlike the Quiznet competitions McGarty’s teams have experienced in the past, in that this time the games will be televised on WGBH. The show will begin airing on WGBH in March, with one game a week until the finals, which will be televised in June.
This year’s team consists of seniors Becca Turner, Jacky McGoldrick, Lewis Pacheco, and Dan Eisenberg and juniors Andrew Hong and Brett Keating. The team recently attended a Quiznet competition at Harvard University and has been competing throughout the year in the Academic Bowl.
“Danny Eisenberg and Andrew Hong were on the national team last year so they are very strong players,” says McGarty. “We added Becca Turner, Jacky McGoldrick, Brett Keating and Lewis Pacheco. Out of 130 players at Harvard, Danny turned out to be the sixth highest scorer, followed by Becca and Andrew, who placed in the 30s. We have the pieces, but we can only use four players, so I’m still figuring out who the final team will be.”
Team members are keeping an open mind about their chances of winning the show. “I really can’t tell at this point how well we will do,” says Keating. “We’ve got some wicked smart people on our team—they all know lots of trivia. Hopefully we’ll be able to make it to a respectable point.”
The trivia material itself falls into a variety of categories based on curriculum material commonly covered in high school. “Questions range from art to mythology, to history, to literature,” says Keating. “Hopefully there will be some sports and pop culture because those are my strongest categories.”
Parents and students are invited to attend the filming at WGBH’s studio in Brighton; the show will have an audience much like that of Jeopardy. Teams Bromfield will compete against include Amesbury High School, Boston Collegiate Charter School in Dorchester; Brighton High School, Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School, Everett High School, Framingham High School, Hingham High School, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, Lynn English High School, Methuen High School, Minuteman Career & Technical High School in Lexington, Nipmuc Regional High School in Upton, Oakmont Regional High School in Ashburnham, Randolph High School, Revere High School, Quincy High School, Dudley’s Shepherd Hill Regional High School, Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis, and University Park Campus School in Worcester.
Bromfield takes on Nipmuc on Feb. 6, but Harvard viewers will have to tune into WGBH-TV on March 22 to find out if their team had a high enough score to make it through to the finals.