The Largo High School History Bowl Team is celebrating a victory this weekend. The six-member team recently returned from Washington, D.C. winners of the National History Bowl and Bee Championship.

  • 145 teams from around the U.S. competed in 3-day competition
  • Team rallied from 20 points behind to win
  • For more information, visit http://www.historybowl.com/

The team beat teams from 144 other schools from across the country.

"There was American history, ancient history, medieval history,” said Charles Phillips, LHS freshman. “I specialized in European history, especially 18th Century and middle ages and stuff like that, so those were the ones that I mainly answered."

"We’ve worked really hard," said Chase Timberlake, LHS Senior. "We spent a lot of months of preparation, a lot of lunches, a lot of class time that we’ve spent and after school even trying to prepare for this."

The 3-day competition was intense. Competitors faced questions such as this:

"An occupant of this office wrote the autobiography Present at the Creation. Another person was nominated to this position after William Fulbright proved too controversial. A holder of this office resigned after Operation Eagle Claw, and another used the idea of "ex injuria jus non oritur" to state that the U.S. would not recognize the results of the invasion of Manchuria. For 10 points, name this position held by Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Cyrus Vance, and Henry Stimson."

The answer? Secretary of State, of course. And then, students had to contend with "Lightning Round" questions like these, which all needed to be answered in 60 seconds:

Who or what was the ...

1. 1942 battle in which American forces sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers off of a namesake atoll?

2. Admiral made Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet?

3. Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet during the campaign?

Especially in that round, students had to think fast and answer faster.

"Especially towards the end of some of the questions it would make probably a hundredth of second of a difference between who got the point and who didn’t," said Phillips.

As the competition came down to the wire, the team was behind with no room for error.

"We were down by 20 points and we were going into the very last question," explained Timberlake. "We needed to get 30 points, and we had to get it on the first line, and the answer was the American flag and it was asking about like these artists and their works revolving around the American flag, and when our team got it, it was such a great feeling," said Timberlake.

The team won in the competition's Varsity Middle Bracket Group. For more information on the competition, visit historybowl.com.