Not many OHS students can say that they have been on TV, but three seniors and a junior will soon make that list. These students are going to appear in the WREG Channel 3 Knowledge Bowl this upcoming Saturday, Jan. 14, at 9 a.m.

Seniors Shawn Chao, Tycho Jenkins, Nitin Ankisetty, and junior Anish Ravishankar participated and won the competition in December. Senior and alternate member Ash Hurdle was also at the match, but did not participate since the other team members were there.

“The Memphis Knowledge Bowl was a good opportunity to get on TV, and I’m not complaining about that,” Chao said.

While the thought of judgement from classmates can be intimidating, Chao believes that, overall, the thought of others seeing him compete pushed him to do better.

“I think there’s two ways to look at this. One, there’s like, ‘Oh man it puts pressure on us to do well,’ but at the same time, it’s going to make us want to study and make our school look good, so I think there’s always a positive way to look at pressure,” Chao said.

Ankisetty believes that having others see the show is good but also nerve-wracking to think about.

“I’m a little bit nervous because there are some questions we didn’t know, so there’s going to be some awkward silences, but overall I’m pretty excited,” Ankisetty said.

Along with having peers see their competition, the actual process of taping the show can be overwhelming, but the team got some advice to help them along the way.

“Jim Jaggers, who was our host, gave us some tips before we started,” Ankisetty said. “We were actually on a set with lights and everything.”

Due to the show’s early airing time, the team has no plans for getting together to watch their success in the competition.

“We’re not planning to have a watch party,” Assistant Principal and Knowledge Bowl sponsor Paul Ross said.

Ravishankar admitted that seeing the show on Saturday might not be a possibility, but he is hoping to see it at one point in the future.

“We’re thinking about having Mr. Ross record the show and show it to us to see our mistakes,” Ravishankar said.

Seeing these mistakes will be helpful, as the team hopes to take home another win in their upcoming competition in the Knowledge Bowl against Collierville, which is taking place Feb. 2 and will be aired on March 25.

Through practice questions provided by Ross, knowledge of current events, and experiences with past competitions, the team hopes to prepare even more diligently for the next event.

“Collierville is actually really good from our previous experiences, so the next one wouldn’t be like the last one,” Ravishankar said. “It will probably be really close.”

Chao also believes that the their next win will be harder to achieve and they should start getting ready for the next competition soon.

“We’ve been kind of doing a bad job about that recently, but definitely, we need to pick it up,” Chao said. “This time we need to prepare better.”

Whether or not the team wins their next competition, the students are making sure their experiences preparing and competing are positive ones.

“The best part about quiz bowl is the practicing against your peers and then also playing with them against other teams,” Ravishankar said. “You just can’t describe that feeling of unity and teamwork.”