The LCM Quiz Bowl team recently brought home the first place trophy in the Channel 6 Academic Challenge for the second year in a row. The team, consisting of seniors Justice Peveto and Cameron Blanchard, and junior Matthew Cox, was recognized at the Channel 6 banquet last week.

The team competed against a total of 17 other local schools in this year’s challenge and defeated Buna and Memorial in earlier matches to advance to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, they defeated Nederland High School and then went on to beat Bridge City in the championship game with a score of 240-180.

In a typical quiz bowl challenge, the students are quizzed in all the academic areas – history, government, literature and grammar, journalism, math, music, art, theater and sports. According to sponsor Charlette Roddy, they must be knowledgeable about current events and pop culture and basically must be prepared to answer questions about anything and everything.

“Students who compete on quiz bowl teams are bright and curious,” Roddy said. “Not only are they good students, they pay attention to what’s happening around the world.”

To prepare for the quiz bowl tournaments, Roddy said the team met yearlong, once a week, before school at 7:30 a.m. During their practices, the team members competed against each other in mock games using last year’s sample questions and study guides from the National Academic Quiz Tournaments Association.

“The team was able to purchase a buzzer system with a grant from the LCM Foundation that allows them to replicate tournament matches during practice,” Roddy said. “A special thank you to Ricky Ryan who created study guides and test questions to help the team calculate math problems faster and accurately.”

The Channel 6 Challenge is sponsored by BASF TOTAL Petrochemical LLC, the YMBL and Channel 6. Each member of the winning LCM team received a $1,500 scholarship to the college of their choice. According to Roddy, winning the quiz bowl championship was a team effort.

“I often find myself amazed and asking, ‘How do they know the answers to some of these questions?'” she said. “And of course, a great deal of the credit goes to their teachers. This level of knowledge and retention of that knowledge is a result of good teachers. I’m very proud of the students and our teachers.”