Students from Prairie View traveled to Orlando, Fla., last Thursday to compete in the annual Honda Campus All-Star Challenge trivia competition. The contest pits students from HBCUs around the country against one another in a battle of the minds.
Prairie View was selected to be a part of the “Strong 64,” the designation for schools which qualified to compete earlier this year.
Though the Prairie View team managed to best all of its opponents in the preliminary round robin competition and qualified as one of the “Sweet 16” teams, the players faltered as playoffs began and were knocked out of the competition during the first round in a close game against SWAC rival Grambling State University.
The students selected came from different fields of study. Cedric Wilson, a biology major who was the team captain, competed last year with Hampton University. Other players included Carlton Singleton, a pre-med student who majors in biology and political science, Dejuan Hall, an architecture major, Jerrell Allen, an English major, and Jonathan Gholston, a marketing major. The team is coached by Herbert Thomas of Career Services.
Because Prairie View’s team qualified for playoff rounds, the university was awarded $5,000 in grants from the competition. The largest grant, which was awarded to 2008 National Champions Oakwood University, is $50,000. For placing in the top 16 participating schools, members of Prairie View’s team will be featured in the April 10th edition of USA Today magazine in a two page spread.
Gholston said, “Orlando was a great experience, especially being the only freshman on the team was difficult. We accomplished what we wanted to do by going 7-0 in our room, but we wanted to go farther. Competing isn’t as easy as it sounds, you have to think quickly and have good recall.”
The 7-0 refers to Prairie View’s record in the round robin competition, in which Prairie View defeated all of its opponents by a margin of no less than 140 points.
The Honda Campus All-Star Challenge is administered by College Bowl and is sponsored every year by the Honda Motor Company. The program started in 1989 when Honda proposed a program to the College Bowl Company for Black colleges.
The competition is a general academic trivia bowl which mostly focuses on the sciences, literature, sports, American and world politics, popular culture, and black history.The current format was adopted in 1996, which abandoned the sectional games and the televising of games in favor of an all-encompassing 64-team National Championship Tournament held each year in March or April.