After 16 seasons centered in Massachusetts and Maine, GBH’s High School Quiz Show is making its debut in Austin. The single-elimination competition encourages student knowledge and fosters teamwork through several rounds of fast-paced trivia on subjects like sports, literature, pop culture, science and history. The 17th season, High School Quiz Show: Austin, filmed a live taping of its first episode on February 7th at the Austin PBS Media Center, featuring central Texas schools including LASA, Westlake, Marble Falls, Round Rock and McCallum.
After receiving an email blast regarding the program’s inaugural season in Austin, history teacher Clifford Stanchos took it upon himself to bring the vision to life at McCallum.
“I thought a quiz team would be a good thing for us,” Stanchos said. “There’s a lot of UIL academic events that McCallum has recently tried to put more emphasis on and did pretty well in the last several UIL meets. Oftentimes, for McCallum, sports, theater or the fine arts program get a lot of the attention. It’s a good way just to show off what we have academically.”
Given no handbook, Stanchos had to make up the tryout process himself. In late October, he began assessing interest by having any interested students come in and take a sample quiz. After tabulating results, Stanchos narrowed the team down to six people, four members and two alternates. Senior Will Bowman was selected as an alternate. Having loved trivia his whole life, Bowman was grateful for an opportunity to showcase his skills.
“Back in October, I saw an announcement on Blend,” Bowman said. “I’ve always enjoyed watching Jeopardy with my mom, so when I saw that, I thought that it would be a really cool opportunity. Even though I’m just an alternate, I’m ready in case someone can’t be there.”
Soon after finalizing the roster, the team began weekly meetings focused on getting to know one another and learning the game.
“We’ve been meeting during lunch, mainly to watch previous episodes,” Bowman said. “At first, it was a little awkward because we didn’t know each other very well, but as we go on, it’s less of a problem. We’re all here for McCallum, we’re all a team.”
For junior team member Mitch Peters, trying out for the team was an opportunity to showcase knowledge while having fun in a game-like environment.
“I’m really knowledgeable about stuff, so I thought I’d be good at trivia,” Peters said. “I pretty much do it for the love of the game.”
According to Peters, making it to the televised round was not an easy task. To qualify, the team had to undergo a rigorous qualifying test against other central Texas schools.
“The tryouts were just the first part, we still had to qualify,” Peters said.
In January, the team went to Austin PBS Studios, where they were given 40 minutes to complete a 50-question qualifier test. Despite over 20 schools participating in Super Sunday, McCallum was selected as one of eight schools that qualified for the televised competition. Bowman said that although there was a sense of unknowing going into the televised round, the team was ready to take on the challenge.
“I feel like it’s kind of blind,” Bowman said. “You can’t really anticipate the skill level of the other team, but I feel like we got our chance, we know what we’re doing and we can’t really anticipate anyone else, so we just had to go in with our eyes set on the prize.”
According to Stanchos, spending time together at events is essential to facilitating a team environment.
“As a team, the little things help, like when we ate lunch together at PBS studios after our qualifying round,” Stanchos said. “We also had to fill out a questionnaire for facts about us that the host is going to interview us on, so you learn things you might not learn otherwise, and that’s part of the team-building process.”
On Saturday, February 7, at PBS Studios, the McCallum quiz team competed against St. Michael’s. Although they are unable to share information regarding the competition, you can watch the McCallum quiz team show off their skills when the first episode of High School Quiz Show: Austin airs on April 1, 2026.
