You’ve got 60 seconds to answer a long list of trivia questions. With your fingers on a buzzer, not the Google button.
“The technical name for egg whites?”
“Albumen.”
“Who succeeded Thomas Fairfax as commander of the New Model Army and became England’s Lord Protector in 1653?”
“Oliver Cromwell.”
“What biomolecules are the subject of Levinthal’s paradox and are folded by . . . ”
“Proteins.”
“What is an area of an annulus whose outer radius is 13 and whose inner radius is eight?”
“104 pi?”
“So close,” said Erik Hamer, a teacher at East Hampton High School. “The answer is actually 105 pi.”
So it went on the afternoon of March 16 in a classroom at the high school after the school day had ended. Mr. Hamer, who teaches Latin, is also the coach for the school’s Academic Team, an extracurricular club that operates like a scholastic version of the television trivia show “Jeopardy!” but plays as a team, and with buzzers at the ready. Between November and March, the team competes in the Regional Quiz Bowl, an interscholastic academic league for schools across Long Island that began in 1989.
East Hampton’s varsity team stands unbeaten this year — a first during Mr. Hamer’s seven years as coach — having won all five of its meets, held once a month. Ranked sixth over all regionally, based on their points tally, the students will next compete in the regional Quiz Bowl finals sometime in April.
“Okay, let’s go to the heart attack round,” he then suggested to his charges, explaining to a visitor that in this high-stakes segment, every wrong answer gets a five-point deduction.
“I remember once we were down, I think, five questions in, in this round,” said Aryan Chugh, a junior and the club’s vice president. “And then the other team got two more, but then we went on a streak and won. It was crazy, really fun,” he said.
Having fun, while giving their brains a good workout, seemed to be the prevailing mood during last week’s practice. In competition, the teams comprise four students, with two alternates who can be subbed in and out as often as necessary. There are four rounds of quizzes per meet. The first round has a series of random questions, and each correct answer comes with one additional team bonus question. Round two is all about collaboration and the team works together to answer five questions. Round three is the lightning round: 10 questions in 60 seconds, followed by the final, heart attack round, as Mr. Hamer called it.
Team members have their idiosyncratic areas of expertise.
“Some of us are good in the lightning round,” explained Dante Sasso, the team captain and a senior who will be attending Brandeis University this fall. “I’m someone who follows politics pretty closely, so that helps with those questions. And Aryan is in a class that does in-depth scientific research. And Trevor knows a lot of stuff that’s usually really useful for the lightning round,” he said about his teammate Trevor Stachecki.
“We always try to have a well-rounded base. We know each other’s strengths so when we’re making subs, we try to make sure that it’s well rounded, like you don’t want to stack up a bunch of history nerds,” said Aryan.
All this geeking out in the open is clearly a sign of how social attitudes have reversed from the days when the stereotype of quirky and bookish individuals, otherwise known as geeks and nerds, was that they were largely introverted and ostracized figures whose only social interaction happened within their Dungeons and Dragons groups. There was even a movie made about them — “Revenge of the Nerds.” (Etymology-wise, there is a difference between geeks and nerds: Geeks are collectively interested in the newest developments in their chosen niche interest, while nerds are logic-driven and mostly academic superstars.)
None of these outdated stereotypes apply to the group of boys and girls on the East Hampton Academic Team, who are intellectuals, athletes, friendly, funny, and seemingly caring and kind to one another.
“It’s actually funny,” explained Aryan, who, according to newspaper reports, plays baseball and football. “In the school’s newsletter they published that the Academic Team won against Riverhead and people are like congratulating us in the hallways and stuff. So, it’s actually the complete opposite.”
“Nowadays, especially at our school, our sports aren’t really the focus,” added Dante, a baseball player. “Some other schools up the Island might be putting all their budgets into sports, but we fund the arts really well. And now the greatest accomplishment wouldn’t be playing varsity sports. Just kind of being skilled in academics has become more popular and more acceptable.”
What is clear is that Mr. Hamer has created an environment in which learning and performing mental gymnastics is fun. All the students acknowledged that they were drawn to the club after being introduced to him as their Latin teacher. They praised him for never pressuring them to win or reprimanding them if they ever failed.
Abraham Stillman, a freshman, said he, too, decided to join the Academic Team after having Mr. Hamer for Latin.
“I showed up and I was really impressed by how smart everyone was. So, I felt a little intimidated at the beginning,” he said, then added, “This is really a fun club.”