(April 5, 2012) — Hand over his buzzer, sophomore Saikiran Ramanan felt a rise in adrenaline as he anticipated the next question at the 22nd Annual Glendale Unified School District Scholastic Bowl. Ramanan was one of five students who represented Clark Magnet at the competition held March 19. Making a comeback from its last-place essay score, the team was able to place second, 11 points behind Crescenta Valley. Teams of five students from each GUSD high school went to Glendale High’s auditorium, where months of intense preparation came down to that one night. The students showcased their knowledge when going head to head in answering a series of trivia questions. Each school arrived in matching ensembles, with Glendale sporting suspenders, Hoover in purple, CV in suits, and Clark clad in suits and top hats, a fashion suggestion by member junior Kyle Bogosian. According to Ramanan, during the actual quiz portion of the competition, they were asked questions similar to those on game shows like Jeopardy. “Questions were really random, from naming a Beach Boys song to asking about the most abundant substance that’s found in a list of given substances,” said Ramanan. Fellow team member junior David Khachatrian said with a scrunched expression, “I still remember one of the questions—‘Which is the opening of the small intestines?’—for the sciences, and I’m just like…” However, Khachatrian said that he was pretty surprised when asked a question about Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman,” a poem that he had learned from English teacher Carol Pettegrew. Recalling an instance in which one of the questions should have given points to Clark, Khachatrian said, “My buzzer would be ringing, but then the announcer Fritz Coleman would just call up CV’s team, even though I’m saying, ‘No, it’s beeping!’ Earlier in the month, during the first division of the competition, the students went to the GUSD administrative building, where they were given one hour to write on an essay topic. This time, the matter was to explain their view on whether they believed super PACs should spend unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose a governmental purpose. The team’s essay score of 29 out of 40 put them in last place at the beginning of the buzzer round. Since early fall, the team has met up nearly every day at lunch in the cybrary to practice. “Mrs. Newcomer asks us questions, and we try to answer quickly and correctly,” said Ramanan. Out of all the members of those training, Ramanan was one of the five members Newcomer selected to represent Clark’s Varsity Scholastic Bowl team for the competition. Looking back on the result of the night, Khachatrian said, “Because we got some questions wrong—or didn’t get called on for questions that we would’ve gotten right—we got second place. But if we had gone with our gut a couple of times, then we would’ve won.”