It’s Academic is the world’s longest running quiz TV show and has aired on NBC4 since 1961. After winning first place in the Green Eggs and Hammond tournament, and sixth place out of 25 teams in the regular season last year, RHS has had add all new members to its A team.

“Our team is actually very good this year and we lost our entire A team last year, which was all seniors,” head captain Nathaniel Glod said. “So, I’m actually very surprised and proud of all of the people on the team.”

For the 56th season of It’s Academic, the new members of the TV team are Glod, junior Jet Lee and sophomore Jack Sobel. There are two subgroups under the It’s Academic team- The A team and the B team. They lost five seniors but they are still positive for the team’s future.

This is similar to sports teams where the A team would equate to varsity, being the more experienced and knowledgeable players, and the B team would resemble a JV team, with players who less experienced or are relatively newer to It’s Academic.

While individual players may have differing abilities and performance levels, the A team as a whole is typically the best team, while the B team is developing together.

“Last season we had a very strong team, and this season I think we have more breadth- last year we had good people, but we had mainly one person who was the base of the team, and this year with me and Jet Lee and Jack- and Niko especially, we have breadth of knowledge and the speed to answer,” Glod said. “So, I think we’re a lot wider compared to last year’s team.”

So far, the TV team has been able to secure 27th place out of 81 schools just with their first TV match against Virginia schools South County HS and Park View HS.

“That was a pretty dominant showing. We’d also like to win the Montgomery Academic Beltway League (MABL), which is possible; we’re currently 2nd of 25 teams. We’ve got very good speed and quite a bit of experience for a young team. After losing five seniors last year, we thought this would be a rebuilding year. Not so much,” head coach David Goodrich said. “Our A team of Nate Glod, Jet Lee, Niko Baldwin, Jack Sobel and Will Lawson is 24-2 (in the regular season), which is not bad.”

Since RHS won their most recent TV meet Jan 7, the team will be advancing to the next round where they will be facing Langley HS, the team which got them out last season.

“So the next team is pretty good, and on the TV [season], it’s the one that eliminated the Rockville team last year, but I think that we could possibly beat them, because we have a decently solid team this year,” Lee said. “So, we can step up our game a little bit and then hopefully we will do well.”