Despite key member Daichi Ueda’s graduation, the “It’s Academic” team remains competitive among its circuit. On the first round taping of “It’s Academic,” WJ won by a fairly large margin against Osbourn Park High school and Edison High School of Virginia.


The team’s second round of competition begins Jan. 23, against W.T. Woodson and Osbourn High School.

Junior Kuo-Kai Chin, the new captain of the team, understands why some view the team as an underdog for the new season.

“I think we’re a lot better than most people on the circuit expected, since most people thought that we were not going to be nearly as good after Daichi graduated,” said Chin. “It wasn’t really possible for other teams to tell how good the rest of the team was when Daichi was scoring almost all of the points, so it’s really not their fault.”

To prepare for the upcoming challenges, the team recruited four underclassmen, three of whom are freshmen. Subsequently, the team ranked fifth out of the 36 teams at a Virginia tournament, even with being one player short. Among the three students who competed was freshman Grahme Taylor, appearing in his very first competition.

“It’s always exciting to have young talent, which we didn’t have very much of last year,” said Chin. “It was really impressive to see a kid being really aggressive and totally unafraid of messing up at his first tournament, and he got way more buzzes than I did at my first few tournaments.”

Other than the NBC taping, the team has had a busy first quarter, entering the MCPS TV show “Quizmaster Challenge” and a tournament in Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia. By winning all five of the preliminary games, WJ enters the Quizmaster Challenge playoffs as the number two seed.

“We will not be in the top 10 in the nation as we were last year, as we lost a lot of talent to graduation,” said sponsor Mark Whipple. “But we will be competitive with even the best teams in the area this year.”