Answer: A childhood dream of 2012 Blacksburg High School graduate Sam Bernhard.
Question: What is to be a contestant on “Jeopardy!”?
This fall the 19-year-old lived that dream when he competed on the
television game show famous for giving answers as clues. His dream is
scheduled to be aired across the country on Dec. 11.
“It was a pretty surreal experience,” Bernhard said.
A sophomore double-majoring politics and environmental studies in at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, Bernhard grew up watching “Jeopardy!” with his family and took a particularly strong interest in it when he joined Blacksburg’s Scholastic Bowl team during his junior year.
“When he got involved in Quiz Bowl in high school, he watched it religiously,” said his mother, Laura Bernhard.
She said during that time it was a common sight to find her son racing home from soccer practice or other extracurricular activities to compete against family members, friends, or whomever just happened to be present and watching the quiz show.
The constant viewing likely paid off for the then-high school student. Blacksburg High School Quiz Bowl coach Matt Beeken said Sam Bernhard didn’t start off his Quiz Bowl career as the strongest player, but that changed by the young man’s senior season.
“By his senior year he’d become our team captain. He was our strongest player,” Beeken said.
In January, Sam decided to try his hand at the real thing and took Jeopardy’s online test, from which he qualified for a live audition in Detroit in July.
There Sam Bernhard said he learned he was among 2,500 to qualify for the audition from the more than 100,000 who took the online test. Of those 2,500 auditioning, only 400 would be invited to participate in the real show in Los Angeles.
“I was by far the youngest person there,” Sam said.
As a member of Oberlin’s men’s soccer team, Sam was already on campus for preseason practice in August when he received the call informing him he’d made the cut.
At the end of September he traveled to Los Angeles, where for the first time he experienced all that comes with preparing to compete on TV and in front of a live studio audience.
“It was the first time in my life I ever wore makeup,” he said.
During the show, the lifelong trivia lover said the difficulty of the questions didn’t surprise him nearly as much as the difficulty of mastering buzzing in to answer them.
“It’s really much harder to ring in the buzzer, to get the timing right on that, than I’d imagined,” he said.
So how did the Blacksburg alum fair at buzzing in against his opponents?
People will just have to tune in to find out. That’s what he’s been telling them for months, Sam said.
Laura Bernhard said that might be a little difficult for some members of her son’s immediate family, who relocated to Evansville, Ohio after Sam’s high school graduation.
There the show airs at 3:30 p.m., when most people are still at work, she said.
Sam Bernhard will undoubtedly have a large cheering section when the show hits the WDBJ (Channel 7) air waves in the New River Valley at its normal 7:30 p.m. time.
Beeken said the Blacksburg Quiz Bowl team has moved up their Dec. 11 match against Christiansburg in order to make sure it will be over in time for them to cheer for their former teammate as he participates at the next level.
“I guess ‘Jeopardy!’ is like the pros of Quiz Bowl,” Beeken said.
Question: What is to be a contestant on “Jeopardy!”?
“It was a pretty surreal experience,” Bernhard said.
A sophomore double-majoring politics and environmental studies in at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, Bernhard grew up watching “Jeopardy!” with his family and took a particularly strong interest in it when he joined Blacksburg’s Scholastic Bowl team during his junior year.
“When he got involved in Quiz Bowl in high school, he watched it religiously,” said his mother, Laura Bernhard.
She said during that time it was a common sight to find her son racing home from soccer practice or other extracurricular activities to compete against family members, friends, or whomever just happened to be present and watching the quiz show.
The constant viewing likely paid off for the then-high school student. Blacksburg High School Quiz Bowl coach Matt Beeken said Sam Bernhard didn’t start off his Quiz Bowl career as the strongest player, but that changed by the young man’s senior season.
“By his senior year he’d become our team captain. He was our strongest player,” Beeken said.
In January, Sam decided to try his hand at the real thing and took Jeopardy’s online test, from which he qualified for a live audition in Detroit in July.
There Sam Bernhard said he learned he was among 2,500 to qualify for the audition from the more than 100,000 who took the online test. Of those 2,500 auditioning, only 400 would be invited to participate in the real show in Los Angeles.
“I was by far the youngest person there,” Sam said.
As a member of Oberlin’s men’s soccer team, Sam was already on campus for preseason practice in August when he received the call informing him he’d made the cut.
At the end of September he traveled to Los Angeles, where for the first time he experienced all that comes with preparing to compete on TV and in front of a live studio audience.
“It was the first time in my life I ever wore makeup,” he said.
During the show, the lifelong trivia lover said the difficulty of the questions didn’t surprise him nearly as much as the difficulty of mastering buzzing in to answer them.
“It’s really much harder to ring in the buzzer, to get the timing right on that, than I’d imagined,” he said.
So how did the Blacksburg alum fair at buzzing in against his opponents?
People will just have to tune in to find out. That’s what he’s been telling them for months, Sam said.
Laura Bernhard said that might be a little difficult for some members of her son’s immediate family, who relocated to Evansville, Ohio after Sam’s high school graduation.
There the show airs at 3:30 p.m., when most people are still at work, she said.
Sam Bernhard will undoubtedly have a large cheering section when the show hits the WDBJ (Channel 7) air waves in the New River Valley at its normal 7:30 p.m. time.
Beeken said the Blacksburg Quiz Bowl team has moved up their Dec. 11 match against Christiansburg in order to make sure it will be over in time for them to cheer for their former teammate as he participates at the next level.
“I guess ‘Jeopardy!’ is like the pros of Quiz Bowl,” Beeken said.
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