Evanston Teen Competes In 'Surreal' Jeopardy College Tournament

EVANSTON, IL — A recent Evanston Township High School graduate competed in the "Jeopardy!" college tournament airing this week. Beni Keown, a freshman at Northwestern University, was one of 15 competitors to qualify for the 10-show tournament. His first-round matchup against a junior from Hendrix College in Arkansas and a sophomore from the University of Southern California is scheduled to air Thursday.

Keown, 18, said he felt "giddy" when he first had a chance to take to the stage at the show's Culver City studios to record promotional material for the show at his first taping in early February. His first encounter with Alex Trebek came after the legendary host was introduced to the audience just as the game was set to begin.

"I was thinking, 'Oh my God, that's Alex Trebek, this is actually happening,' but then I had no time to dwell on it because we go right into the game," Keown said. "He was actually a lot funnier than I expected him to be. During commercial breaks, there's a live studio audience so he fielded questions from them, and he's got humor that you don't really see on television."

In the two months since Keown's appearance was recorded, the spread of the coronavirus led the show's producers to first end in-person audiences before announcing the suspension of "Jeopardy!" production on March 16.

Keown said he succeeded in his first attempt at applying to appear on the show. The process began with a 50-question quiz that he completed in October 2019, he explained. After checking the answers later, he learned he had got about 38 questions correct, three more than the cutoff for a callback, he said.

The next step in the screening, Keown recalled, was a day trip to St. Louis for a screen test and an abbreviated test game of about 10 questions with a couple dozen of the hundreds of hopeful contests who had passed the earlier screening.

"They gave you a second test to make sure you hadn't cheated on the first one, but it was more how you were able to act and answer questions and play the game. It was more screening you for TV rather than screening you for knowledge," he said. "It was just for them to see if we could speak loud, be confident when answering and calling out categories, things like that."

Keown, who was born in New York City grew up in Evanston from the age of 5, has been a member of the competitive trivia teams at the high school and collegiate level, starting two years ago with the ETHS scholastic bowl team.

"I'd always been interested in trivia before then," he said. "And I just did my best to just learn everything I could learn about stuff I was interested in, but junior year was when I got introduced to the competitive extracurricular trivia activities the school had."

The Wildkit scholastic bowl squad, coached by science teacher Terry Gatchell, has been one of the most successful in the Central Suburban League. Keown captained the team to a conference championship his senior year and a trip to the national championships, where the team finished 158th in the nation.

In his first year at Northwestern, Keown said he has competed in two full college-level tournaments in his first year as a member of the quiz bowl team, which has about 15 to 20 regular members.

Airing next week, the second round of the college championship format features the five winners of the first week of shows and the four highest-scoring contestants who did not win. Those nine semifinalists face off in three shows from Monday to Wednesday, with the winners competing in a two-day final on April 16 and April 17. The winner of the college championship receives a $100,000 cash prize and entry in the to show's tournament of champions.

Keown said he did research into the usual cut-offs to qualify for the wild card berths in an effort to know what to wager. But with only about two weeks notice before the date filming was due to begin, there was little he could do to prepare for the "surreal" experience.

"You see this on TV, but it's a whole different thing to stand there and be behind a podium holding the buzzer, looking at a board. It's really cool," he said. "We've all watched this on TV at some point and probably most of us have played along with the questions and now we get to actually do it."