It was down to the last question in the 2015 Regional academic tournament with the championship on the line. Albemarle was up against Thomas Jefferson High School from Richmond. Senior captain Quinn LeGallo-Malone was the first to react to the question. Looking the prompter dead in the eye, LeGallo-Malone gave his answer, “the gas constant.” His answer was correct; Albemarle had won the Regional championship.

Albemarle then moved on to States, where they cruised through to claim the State championship. The team credits a lot of their success to their preparations.

“We have a couple different methods – the easiest is just to pay attention in class. But while you can learn a lot there, in order to know the really tricky clues, we have to do some outside studying. That’s where outside resources like Wikipedia come in handy, as do reading through old questions to see what answers are frequently asked and what clues are associated with them,” junior Luke Henter said.

“I think the back to back state championships come from a core group of motivated players who study outside of their normal practice time, specifically the past two years we’ve had an overlap of three starters: captain Quinn LeGallomalone, Luke Henter and myself. Quinn and Luke especially have put in extra hours to improve themselves. Quinn spent much of his summer studying and that’s really made the team so much better,” added senior Andreas Ravichandran.

These methods of preparation will be put to use as the team gears up for the rapidly approaching National tournament at the end of the year.

“In Nationals we’re looking forward to playing some of the best teams in the country, from around the world even. Hopefully we will do better than last year, but we never know what’s going to happen. That’s our goal,” LeGallo-Malone said.

The prospect of going to Nationals has always been a motivator for the team and actually reaching this goal is something that the members are proud of.

“Attending Nationals last year was a huge source of pride for us,” Henter said.

Last year after finishing in seventh place in their eight-school group, the team went on to win the bottom bracket of the National tournament.

“[This year] we’d like to win it all, but realistically I think a strong goal would be to finish in the top 25 nationally,” said Ravichandran.

Albemarle will compete in this year’s tournament on June 6-7 in Reston, Virginia.