What’s Your Bracket?

When people ask,  “What’s your bracket?” they usually refer to the upcoming March Madness, but for a few genius Panther Creek students, the question has another, whole different meaning. That’s because they perform on WRAL’s Brain Game competition, an event where schools throughout the state go up against one another in a test of smarts to find out who knows the most trivia and facts.  Creating a bracket for the Brain Games would be just like making one for Jeopardy! or March Madness – simply pick the teams you want to win in the tournament, and watch the results unfold.

Brain Game airs every Saturday morning on WRAL, and each week three different schools compete for the title. The winner of those episodes will compete against the winners of other episodes, until an ultimate winner is chosen in May. The winning team members receive MP3 players as their prize.

Panther Creek’s team currently features Ben Hollering, Andrew Yin, and Taruni Santanam, but the team also participates in occasional Quiz Bowls that also includes Philip Zhu and Anam Ahmad.

Across-the-Board Trivia

“The game includes several sections of trivia, with the first being pop culture topics like popular actors, movies, songs, and that sort of thing.” Hollering tells PCNN. “Every section has a continuous theme, for instance, the answer of every question in the first round at our last competition was a fast food restaurant.”

The game also features a news section which has questions about current events and politics, followed by math, science, arts, and then a themed crossword puzzle. “The final section is called ‘Globe Trotting,’  and they tell the teams the three countries that we’ll have to discuss.” Hollering says. “Each team member picks a country. I usually do European countries, Andrew does Asian countries, and Taruni handles the South American countries, since those are the most common.”

“The team then gets a few minutes to research the country, then they memorize the facts as quickly as possible so they can answer questions about it.” Hollering explained. Although you might think cramming all of that information into your brain is the toughest part about the competition, the team members would disagree: “The hardest part about Brain Game for me is waking up to go on Saturday mornings when it’s taped.” Hollering later commented.

The last time Panther Creek participated was the December 28th episode, when Panther Creek crushed the competition, leading with 540 points over Cape Fear Christian, having only 310 points, and Roanoke Rapids, which had just eighty. To get more information on when the show airs, you can visit the WRAL website.