On March 2, five Clark Magnet High School students achieved a great victory by winning first place in the Pre-Scholastic Bowl Essay contest. Their victory was revealed during the actual Bowl, which took place in Glendale High School’s Auditorium.

The team then went on to participate in the actual bowl. However, in the end, despite their best efforts, Clark Magnet High ended in 3rd place with 61 points. Glendale High got 4th place with 47 points, Hoover got 2nd with 67 points, and finally Crescenta Valley took the prize with 1st place, having 82 points.

During one math question, the 200 or more audience members held their collective breath as the quizmaster’s voice boomed. On stage, behind four small booths, sat students from Glendale, Hoover, Crescenta Valley and Clark Magnet High Schools.

NBC weatherman and Bowl quizmaster Fritz Coleman asked for the diameter of a circle which contained a triangle. Afterwards, the time began to tick. The auditorium went silent. Clark team members Kevin Abuhana, Dylan Greicius, Bhavin Shah and Joshua Valerio began to think and talk. (Sophomore Aram Arutunyan was also a Clark team member but did not compete in the quiz portion.)

The whispers among the audience arose as they started to speculate what was the correct answer. “Time’s up!” Coleman yelled. The team hurried to write the answer on a large piece of paper and lift it up. The silence crashed upon the spectators.

The judges began to analyze the answers. After going through Glendale’s and Hoover’s responses, the turn came for Clark. “Clark: correct!” said the judge.

During the competition, students from every GUSD high school (except for Daily) compete in a complex trivia contest. To prepare for this, the Clark team spent lunch times once a week to practice. Team advisor Susan Newcomer asked the group questions about history, arts, science, geography, math and literature.

This brutal regime of questioning gets even more frequent towards the last few weeks as the competition approached. By this time the students began to meet daily for practice. “They study hard for the scholastic bowl,” Newcomer said, “since literally any question from any of the five topics can be asked.”

This year’s essay prompt asked students to express their opinion on President Barack Obama’s easing U.S. restrictions on Cuba. Their scores were then added and counted as a single score. During the Bowl, it was revealed that the Clark team won the first place, and brought to school a trophy celebrating the victory.

First round of the quiz competition featured Coleman asking a question and giving some time to the teams. When time ran out, every team lifter up their answers. Whichever team didn’t answer got no points. For every wrong answer the teams lost one point. And for every right answer the teams gained two points.

The second round was a Jeopardy-style game that involved the quizmaster asking a question and the team members having to press the buzzers. Whoever pressed it first got to answer first. In both challenges the Clark team gave their very best, going toe-to-toe with Crescenta Valley High for first place. However, Clark ended up getting third place.

“I felt we could do better,” senior Kevin Abuhana said. “We practiced really hard, and it’s not that we overestimated ourselves, it’s just that we weren’t very strategic with our points.”