MONROE — Their humility makes sense.
Henry M. Jackson High School was the seventh and final team to qualify for the area championships of the academic competition known as Hi-Q.
They’d seen the other two finalist schools and knew they were formidable.
The bleachers were full of Monroe High School students eager and encouragingly boisterous for their classmates to do well.
“Monroe is always good and so is Lake Stevens,” said Jackson senior Jared Rodriguez. “Both of them are great teams.”
Yet after the final question was asked Tuesday morning, it was Jackson — seven seniors all wearing white headbands — holding the trophy. Lake Stevens finished second and Monroe, the top scoring team in the regular season, third.
Hi-Q began in 1948 in Pennsylvania as a community program sponsored by the Scott Paper Co. It reached Everett in 1976 when Scott, and later Kimberly-Clark, operated a plant on the waterfront. Everett Community College took over the competition for a stretch and in recent years it has been run by volunteers, thanks in large part to a boost from Monroe Public Schools.
The questions Tuesday were gleaned from a stack of books measuring more than 1½ feet high. They tested knowledge of biology, chemistry, physics, math, sports, Shakespeare, government, literature, U.S. and world history, geography, sports, art history and current events.
Many questions were obscure. None of the students knew that Clarkson University in New York won the NCAA women’s ice hockey championship with a win over the University of Minnesota in 2014.
Students were asked to name the 1989 Supreme Court decision finding that burning the American flag was protected by the First Amendment (Texas vs. Johnson), what hour Julia signaled Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (11 p.m.) and who wrote “The Impending Crisis in the South” before the Civil War (Hinton Rowan Helper).
For Rodriguez, the joy was less about winning than hanging out with friends.
Like their colleagues at other schools, all seven Jackson students have exceptionally heavy academic loads with many competing outside interests.
Rodriguez is taking five college-level Advanced Placement courses this term, but insisted his teammates “are all smarter than me.”
Yet he and fellow 2015 holdover Matthew Lee were smart enough to recruit the others to the Hi-Q team this year.
“We had to kind of convince them to join the team. They are some of my closest friends,” Rodriguez said. “I care for them deeply.”
The recognition is something to share among friends over time, said Colton Lee, a Jackson senior who answered several questions correctly Tuesday.
“I know it will be a good memory,” he said.
Jackson now can compete in a national web-based competition.
Other members of the team are Bao Vo, Nich Feingold, Daniel Nguyen and John Watkins. They are coached by Sinead Pollom.
Test your knowledge
Here are some questions asked during Tuesday’s Hi-Q championship at Monroe High School.
Questions
1. Spanish officials in Cuba rashly forced a showdown in 1854 when they seized an American steamer on a technicality. Give the name of the steamer.
2. At the conclusion of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story titled “Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog,” a man who was sitting in the park reading a book was bothered by an annoying dog. Identify the special item the man reading the book eventually gave to the man’s dog.
3. A group of islands off the northernmost coast of Russia consists of four major islands and several smaller ones. They separate two seas of the Arctic, the Kara to the west and the Laptev to the east. Give the name of the islands.
4. State the name given to polymers formed by reaction diamine and dicarboxylic acid monomers.
5. After World War II, Russia laid claim to a large island in the Sea of Okhotsk. This island, which formerly belonged to Japan, lies south of Kamchatka Peninsula. Give the name of this island.
Answers
1. Black Warrior
2. A garter
3. Severnaya Zemlya
4. Polyamide
5. Sakhalin
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