Paly’s submission of Eyra Dordi for the prompt: “Provide a student from your team’s school with a currently serving California public school Kindergarten teacher shown holdng the Saturday, February 4, 2012, front page of the SF Chronicle of SJ Mercury News newspaper. You must provide written documentation that the educator in your photograph meets the stated criteria.” Dordi was among the participants of the Friends of Millard Fillmore Trivia Hunt, which finished in third place this past weekend.

– Meridian Tran

Palo Alto High School students are looking forward to next year’s Friends of Millard Fillmore Trivia Hunt  after finishing in third place on Monday, Feb. 6.

After adjudication, Paly accumulated 296 points, standing behind Castilleja and Carlmont High School, which had 388 and 352 points respectively. Paly was followed by Woodside High School with 281 points and by Henry M. Gunn High School with 187 points, according to the official website.

“I’m happy with how we did,” co-captain Meridian Tran said. “We needed more communication between members to be more efficient, and we could have used other libraries.”

This feeling was echoed by the other co-captain, Ana Carano.

“I think we did well,” Carano said.  “We moved up from last year. The two teams that were ahead of us were really neck in neck.”

Paly has won the trivia hunt six times in the past, most recently in 2008, according to the official website. In 2011, Paly came in last place, providing the team with plenty of room to improve.

This was the first time the team was co-captained by juniors Meridian Tran and Ana Carano, and by senior Justin Kransner-Karpen.

“Considering that we were new and we didn’t have any experience with the team before, I think we did really well,” Carano said.

The team is thinking about ways to improve for next year, and the co-captains will be meeting next week to discuss better tactics, according to Carano.

“We are considering different forms of advertising, slightly more organization, and more delegating of different jobs to differnt people,”  Carano said.

Carano and Tran both found the Friends of Millard Fillmore Trivia Hunt fun and rewarding.

“The research is fun,” Tran said. “Laboriously searching for a book, scanning through it, looking for a certain word or phrase and then finally finding it is far more rewarding than it sounds – it’s like a minvictory.  The more insidious reward is the random trivia I learn. Like, I know who invented the bumps on the road – Elbert Botts.”

Carano finds the competition very engaging.

“It’s really addictive,” Carano said. “It’s fun, you learn stuff and its competitve. There’s a lot of drama if you go to adjudication. If you like drama, go.”

Even though the team still has room for improvement, Tran is proud of how the team performed and is satisfied with the outcome. 

“We had a few issues,” Tran said. “But they’re nothing we can’t easily fix. We had a good turn out and the people who helped out were amazing.”