Lexington High School’s quiz team is set to compete in GBH’s High School Quiz Show, an academic tournament for high school students in Massachusetts. The show premiered its 16th season’s first episode on Saturday, Feb. 8, with episodes continuing to be released through March, April, and May.
The show begins with Super Sunday, where Massachusetts high school teams apply to be featured in the competition by taking a multiple-choice question test. The 15 highest-scoring teams are invited to the tournament, with their scores determining their seed in the bracket. There is also one Wildcard team, rounding out the total of 16 teams.
Then, over two weekends, the show is taped in WGBH’s studio.
“We’re usually there for a couple hours per episode, and it’s just a really great experience seeing how the show gets produced,” Atreya Mallanna, a co-captain of the team, said. “Usually, we go out for breakfast or lunch after tapings.”
During the live show, teams of four students compete in a buzzer-style competition, where they demonstrate their knowledge in categories including math, history, science, literature, civics, and current events. In the show’s history, Lexington has won three seasons, including the 2024 competition, when the team defeated Buckingham Browne & Nichols School to claim the Season 15 title.
Mallanna, who has been on the team since his freshman year, decided he wanted to compete in the tournament after watching the show as a child.
“When I was younger, I didn’t only watch Arthur and Curious George, but also things like Quiz Show, because it appears on PBS. From a very young age, I knew that I wanted to join the team,” Mallana said.
Mallanna is joined by co-captain Owen Jiang and sophomores Alvan Hossain and Shishir Bharadwaj. The team also has two alternates who do not actively compete, junior Adam Tzafriri and sophomore Eric S. Zhang. The team works together to cover various topics, each with varying difficulty levels.
“They really communicated a lot in preparation, so I think that [was] really helpful for [their] success. The team itself is sort of independent of me. I feel like the meetings we have are mostly organizational—I’ll go over some strategies a bit,” Joshua Olivier-Mason, who has coached the team for the last six years, said.
However, the live tapings come with a fair share of challenges.
“With the way the show works you have to stay there [for a long time] because they’ll have to retape a couple of things, so I always feel like that’s really challenging,” Olivier-Mason said.
Those interested in watching the show can view episodes on YouTube and GBH. This year, Lexington looks forward to another successful season.
