Rummaging through internet sites and library books, a group of Paly students competed in the Millard Fillmore competition this weekend, Feb. 2-6, with four other schools in the area.

Paly placed fourth in the competition, behind Castilleja, in first, Carlmont, in second, and Woodside, in third. Gunn placed fifth in the competition.

According to team captain, junior Alexei Koseff, Paly had hoped to place in the top three, knowing Castilleja and Carlmont would be the main competition.

“All five schools have won this competition at least twice, so I would say that the expectation to do well was very high for all the schools,” said team advisor, Arne Lim.

One of Paly’s main problems was the small size of the team this year, according to Koseff. Because of this, it was harder to answer all of the questions, and especially to get all of the bring-in-items.

One of the bring-in-items this year was the birth certificate of someone born on July 21, 1969, the day of the NASA moon landing, which Paly was unsuccessful in finding, according to senior Adrian Sanborn.

Sanborn felt there could have been a better effort in getting items like these, suggesting posting a memo on the Paly link.

Members also felt there needed to be more advertisement to get students to join the Millard Fillmore team.

“Not everyone likes to spend their weekend in the library searching useless facts, but there are always those crazy few!” Sanborn said.

Lim said, “Not having two of them [bring-in-items] knocked us out of the lead very early in the running, and you could see the other teams gain moral strength.”

Despite these problems, Paly was still expecting to do well prior to the adjudication session on Monday night, where teams present their answers and can challenge other team’s responses.

The readers, who tried to knock down other teams’ answers, were Vienna Tran, Ben Setel, Katie Chow, and vice-captain Michael Bloch. The lawyers, also co-captains, were Alexei Koseff and Alex Josefov, and had the job of defending Paly’s answers.

According to Koseff, Paly was winning in the beginning with the first eighteen questions and two bring-ins, but then fell apart.

“It’s tough on the ego when you pour a lot of heart into a competition, then realize you aren’t even close to the top,” Lim said. “Then you still have to sit there in a professional manner listening to and marveling at the successes of the other teams.”

According to senior captain, Alex Josefov, there have also been changes to the rules this year. Students are now not allowed to document their sources with online newspapers, which allowed people to get answers which should have been harder to find.

“[Now we are] returning to the spirit of the competition!” said Josefov.

Despite the problems this year, team members hope for more success in the future.

“We were not well organized this year,” Koseff said. “This year was a transition year, but next year will be a lot better.”