Belchertown High captures first-ever ‘As Schools Match Wits’ title by whisker over Longmeadow High

BELCHERTOWN — At the start of the 64th season of New England Public Media’s “As Schools Match Wits,” a high school academic trivia game show, Belchertown High School’s team came in as a bit of an underdog.

“We were an entirely new team,” said Jack Meyers, a member of BHS’s team and a 2025 graduate. “None of us had done this specific tournament before. I didn’t expect we’d get so far, but we kept winning.”

Despite their inexperience with this competition, Belchertown won enough points throughout the “As Schools Match Wits” matches to qualify for the playoffs, then dominated the quarterfinals and semifinals.

“As we got closer to the finale, I got more and more confident in my team,” Meyers said.

On June 28, Meyers and his teammates Owen Laurenzo, Sean Lindsay, Naveen Berryhill, Miles McNamara, Cian Lindsay and Braedan Longe competed against Longmeadow High School in the championship for the right to hoist the Collamore Cup. In the final round, both teams were tied at 270 points, and all that was left was a 90-second lightning round.

“It felt like the last lightning round was the whole game,” Berryhill said. “I think I spent the whole last round looking at the scoreboard. I was just trying to track how many questions we needed and to focus only on listening to the questions.”

When the bell sounded, Belchertown had pulled into the lead at 315 points to Longmeadow’s 310. Those five points were enough to win the school’s first-ever Collamore Cup.

“Vigneux got very emotional, and it felt amazing to accomplish something like that with my friends and Mr. Vigneux and to have a shared accomplishment,” said Berryhill, referring to their coach and English teacher Stephen Vigneaux. “If we hadn’t won the semifinals, it would have been a successful season, but the fact that we did as well as we could have was kind of a surreal moment there.”

“As Schools Match Wits” is one of the longest-running high school academic quiz shows in the country televised on NEPM. Since 1961, students from public and private schools in Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut answer questions about literature, history, current events, sports, entertainment, art, music, science and general knowledge across three separate rounds.

The challenge round opens the game with questions worth 10 points each. Then, students quickly ring in to match the answer with a description in the lightning rounds. In capitalization rounds, teams answer a qualifying question to take a category, then answer questions in that category to earn points. If the school gets the question wrong, the opposing team can steal the category with the right answer.

“It’s nice for kids to showcase ‘Jeopardy’-style skills and it’s nice it’s on TV,” Vigneux said. “It gives them some exposure for having a good grasp of the knowledge and skills we expect our students to have.”

Vigneux has coached Belchertown’s “As Schools Match Wits” team for almost 20 years, and while he’s seen a array of smart kids join the team over the years, this group feels like “someone gave me to keys to Ferrari.”

That isn’t to say Belchertown’s previously teams were no less skilled. In 2020 and 2021, the school advanced to the semifinals and finals, but Vigneux said the pandemic hindered their path to victory. Without these obstacles, the intelligence, speed and chemistry of this year’s Belchertown team took them to the finish line.

“I would never underestimate their knowledge base, and they became real students of ‘As Schools Match Wits,’” Vigneux said. “They devoted so much time to learning the game, they were ringing in before the host even finished the question. Some people would say, ‘how do you know what the questions would be?’”

The six Belchertown teenagers are as quick with their wits as they are with a buzzer. Meyers said the team sharpened their skills by practicing along with old episodes each week, or breaking off into teams to answer old questions. This allowed them to figure out the types of phrasing used for certain questions and anticipate answers.

“If you feel confidence in yourself and what the question is going to be, go for it,” Meyers said.

The confidence, Meyers said, was key to the team’s success. As the spokesperson, Meyers had mere seconds to deliberate with his teammates and pick the correct answer. It was stressful, he said, but his trust in his team helped alleviate the pressure.

“I told myself I was going to have fun, not stress about it and go with the flow,” Meyers said. “That’s why we went in our Hawaiian shirts for the first [playoff] match, because we wanted to have fun with it.”

The team did not miss a math or science question all season, Vigneux said, but Berryhill adds that it’s the breath, not just the depth, of the team’s knowledge that brought them the win. The player’s expertise were scattered across categories, covering each other’s weaknesses with their strengths.

“All of us are friends outside of ‘As Schools Match Wits,’” Berryhill said. “We spent a lot of time together, we’re comfortable together and we practiced a lot in a setting of answering the questions quickly, and handled the pressure well.”

While Vigneux credits the championship victory to the team’s talents, Meyers says the coach’s support and knowledge of “As Schools Match Wits” were integral in the team’s success.

“He was the one who put this all together,” Meyers said. “He was almost ready to retire this year, and he even said so himself that he was running out of steam. But he was still really supportive and accommodating of us, and I don’t think we could have done it without him.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com