{"id":12558,"date":"2024-03-20T15:20:37","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T15:20:37","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"Granite-State-Challenge-54427082\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=12558","title":{"rendered":"Trivia Time:\u00a0Hopkinton High School students\u00a0compete in Granite State Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The
The Hopkinton High School Granite State Challenge team on set at the New Hampshire PBS studio in Durham. From left to right: Jackson Kovar, coach Liam Callahan, Conrad Mollano, Flo Dapice, Colton Murphy, Fin Murphy and Adam Richter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"The
The Hopkinton High School Granite State Challenge team outside the NH PBS studio in Durham. From left to right: Jackson Kovar, Adam Richter, Flo Dapice, Colton Murphy, Thomas Ashton and Fin Murphy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Hopkinton
Hopkinton High School will square off against Salem High School in the first round of the 2024 Granite State Challenge tournament on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Jon
Jon Cannon, a social studies teacher at Bow High School, has hosted the Granite State Challenge for five years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Jon
Jon Cannon, a social studies teacher at Bow High School, has hosted the Granite State Challenge for five years.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>

The contestants don\u2019t have to answer in the form of a question, and there aren\u2019t any Daily Doubles or thousands of dollars to be won, but that\u2019s where most of the differences end.<\/p>\n

\n

In Granite State Challenge, host Jon Cannon does his best Alex Trebek impersonation, and high school students from all across New Hampshire do their best to channel their inner Ken Jennings \u2014 or for younger Jeopardy! fans, James Holzhauer or Amy Schneider.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the annual trivia competition between New Hampshire high schools that began in 1984 and airs on New Hampshire PBS. Hopkinton High School once again has a group of students in the tournament after reaching the semifinals last season, and its first round episode against Salem High School airs on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

Hopkinton\u2019s team features senior captain Adam Richter, senior Colton Murphy, junior Flo Dapice, senior Jackson Kovar, senior Conrad Mollano and sophomores Fin Murphy and Thomas Ashton. Most of the group was on last year\u2019s team that came two wins shy of taking home the championship trophy.<\/p>\n

This year, they welcomed a new coach, Hopkinton High social studies teacher Liam Callahan, who admitted he\u2019s not the biggest trivia nerd himself, but saw it as a great way to get involved in the school community after starting there in the fall. He had some of the students in class, and they ultimately convinced him to take over the role.<\/p>\n

In the months leading up to the tournament \u2014 NH PBS taped the episodes in January \u2014 Callahan would spend hours with the students reading through trivia questions from old Granite State Challenges. They\u2019d memorize U.S. presidents in order, pour through random tidbits about New Hampshire and brush up on Shakespeare which, Callahan admits, is a major weakness of his but something the students excel at.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a social studies teacher; I\u2019m not a big English guy,\u201d he joked. \u201cThere would be some obscure, \u2018This character in this Shakespeare play,\u2019 and one of them would pull it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, there are also some instances where Callahan finds himself baffled \u2014 in an amused way, of course \u2014 at some of the questions the students come up empty on. Growing up in the early 2000s and with parents who grew up in the \u201870s, he said, he\u2019s well-versed in pop culture from those eras, but it sometimes poses a challenge for the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things that I know about music, about pop culture from 15, 20 years ago that aren\u2019t common knowledge anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s always kind of funny to see the questions that they knew that I had no idea just because they\u2019d been studying versus the questions I know just because they\u2019re too young to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joining the students on stage at the NH PBS studio will be someone else of note from the Concord area: Cannon, the host, who\u2019s also a social studies teacher at Bow High School.<\/p>\n

He took over hosting duties after Jim Jeannotte retired in 2018. He\u2019d previously been involved with Granite State Challenge as a student at Belmont High School, then behind the scenes working in production as a college student at the University of New Hampshire and as a coach for the Bedford High School team. Mixed in there, he also worked on Jeopardy! for nearly four years as a member of the clue crew.<\/p>\n

It was that time spent at Jeopardy! in the late 2000s when he had the chance to learn game show hosting by osmosis from Trebek, who hosted Jeopardy! for 37 seasons until his death in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe almost never messed up,\u201d Cannon said. \u201cHe was just on point all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the stakes on Granite State Challenge aren\u2019t quite as high, Cannon understands how meaningful it is for the participating students, particularly as an avenue for competition for non-athletes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are always singing the praises of our student-athletes who put on their uniform and go and compete out on the court or the field or on the trails or in the pool for their school, and what a wonderful opportunity it is for those young men and women,\u201d he said. \u201cGranite State Challenge is the premier tournament for kids who are bright and knowledgeable to compete on behalf of their school. \u2026 (It) hits a certain type of kid who is good at (trivia) and wants to shine and gives them that opportunity to represent themselves and their schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Callahan, it\u2019s also a great tool for helping the students learn information that\u2019s probably handy to know anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun, and it allows them to compete against other schools and just boost their knowledge of political history and those sorts of things, which as a social studies teacher, I think are important,\u201d the Hopkinton coach said. \u201cThere\u2019s some, by nature, trivial stuff. But I do think a lot of the questions they ask are important things for well-informed people to know. I think that aspect of it is really beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Callahan and Cannon already know the result of Thursday night\u2019s match, but for obvious reasons, neither could say much about how Hopkinton performed.<\/p>\n

As the host, Cannon can\u2019t take a rooting interest \u2014 aside from rooting for \u201ca good barn burner of a game,\u201d\u00a0as he put it \u2014 but he can take appreciation in seeing some familiar faces from Hopkinton who\u2019ve experienced a good deal of success in the tournament in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s always really cool as well, to see kids come back year after year and get better,\u201d Cannon said. \u201cHopkinton has been a strong team basically the whole time they\u2019ve been on the show. \u2026 And it is always fun to see their hard work pay off.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The contestants don\u2019t have to answer in the form of a question, and there aren\u2019t any Daily Doubles or thousands of dollars to be won, but that\u2019s where most of the differences end.In Granite State Challenge, host Jon Cannon does his best Alex Trebek…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":12559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":true,"_newspack_byline":"by [Author id=188]Eric Rynston-Lobel[\/Author] Monitor staff","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[514,12],"tags":[24,188,505],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[533],"class_list":["post-12558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-centerpiece-cm","category-town-city-government","tag-facebook","tag-hopkinton-middle-high-school","tag-paywall","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/43196463-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12560,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12558\/revisions\/12560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12558"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=12558"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}