Rockville High School

RHS's It's Academic/Quizmaster Team

The Rockville It’s Academic Team prepares students to compete in year-round academic quiz bowl competitions, from local Montgomery Academic Beltway League to the county cable Quizmaster Challenge. Competition culminates on the NBC-4 It’s Academic show, the Guinness-certified longest-running TV quiz show. Most recently, Rockville won the It’s Academic DC Metro Championship in 2008 and 2010, the Baltimore-Washington-Virginia Super Bowl in 2010, and went to the Semifinals in 2012 and 2013. Rockville also won Quizmaster Challenge in 2011. 

Events

• Jan. 10, 2015 – Rockville wins against Magruder and Paul VI on NBC-4’s It’s Academic
• Jan. 22 – Montgomery Academic Beltway League Round Five at Walter Johnson
• Jan. 27 – Tryouts for It’s Academic team
• Feb. 21 – NBC-4 It’s Academic playoffs against Holton Arms, Langley

Rockville High School seniors Marc Intrater, Linda Liu, and Joseph Hsu concentrate on the next question en route to their 1984 Washington Metro Championship victory over W. T. Woodson High School and Georgetown Day School. (Photo Credit: It's Academic)

Team History

The Rockville High School It's Academic team was founded in the 1970's. Rockville has won the Washington, DC, Metro Championships five times: in 1984, 1990, 1999, 2008 and 2010. RHS teams have won seven national championships throughout their history, all of which were in the 80's with coach Kevin Keegan. In 1990, the team finished third in the National Tournament of Academic Excellence in Disney World (later called the Panasonic Academic Challenge). Linda Mencarini, who coached with Keegan from 1997 to 1999, also took the team to the It's Academic DC Finals in 2000 and 2001. In 2008, under the leadership of Dr. Bob Lerner, Rockville won the It's Academic DC - Baltimore - Virginia Championship. The team also has many successful alumni.

• David Kirchoff, a member of the 1984 RHS It’s Academic team, is CEO of Weight Watchers
• William Fagan, on the 1998 team, chairs the Biology Department at the University of Maryland and recently had a cover article in Science magazine
• David Hamilton, who captained the RHS 1994 team won $32,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. He also competed on the 1994 Team Maryland that finished 5th in the nation.
• Sharon Kristal played in the 1990 Teen Jeopardy tournament, and graduated from Princeton.
• Aaron Benor and Matt Denio played on the 1999 Panasonic team that finished third in the nation.
• Daniel Maggin played on Team Maryland in the 2000 National Championship at Panasonic. He also competed on Jeopardy in May 2008.

Special thanks to Kevin Keegan for providing most of the information for this section. Mr. Keegan coached the Rockville team from 1982-1988, 89-91, and 97-99.

This site is maintained by David Goodrich. If you have any questions, please contact him at goodriches@hotmail.com.