A Teenager In Jeopardy, But This Time It’s A Good Thing

By Shannon Hicks

Like many Newtown High School students, Jeff Haylon is out of town for at least part of this week. He and his parents have taken a trip to the nation’s capitol during spring break, and they are doing more than take some historic sights. Unfortunately, the Haylons cannot begin discussing everything they did this week until about 7:30 pm Monday, April 30.

Jeff, 15, a sophomore at NHS, will be one of three contestants seen competing during the first day of the 2012 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament, which will be aired during the week of April 30–May 4.

It’s been a tough few months for Jeff, who recorded his episode back in February and has been sworn to secrecy since.

“I cannot say anything, and people have been trying to trick me up,” he said with a laugh.

While it may have been tough to keep his mouth shut, Jeff has a lot at stake. In addition to the bragging rights that come with appearing on most television shows, contestants on the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament are gunning for a grand prize of $75,000.

The first runner-up receives $25,000 and the second runner-up gets $15,000. Even those who make it into the tournament’s quarterfinals can be happy with prizes of $5,000, while semifinalists are sent home with checks for $10,000.

So there may be a few thousand good reasons why Jeff hasn’t shared with anyone how he did.

Jeff’s road to Jeopardy! began back in 2010, when he caught one of the show’s commercials inviting teenagers to take an online test for the tournament.

“I’m a big trivia buff,” said Jeff. “I’m not going to deny it: I’m a nerd.”

He took a 50-question test in January 2011 and then waited, he said, after being told “we will tell you something within a year.”

“So we pushed this to the back of our minds,” he said. Last May, Jeff received an e-mail inviting him to attend auditions in New York City, which coincided with the week after school ended for the summer.

So Jeff, the youngest of Paget and Rick Haylon’s three children, went with his parents into the city for a three-part audition. Prospective contestants were given a brief interview, took another 50-question test, and played a mock game. Then everyone was again told that they would hear something within a year.

It was not until January 31 — 364 days after Jeff took the initial online test — that the family heard something.

“I had been home from school for about five minutes. The phone rang and my mom answered it, and she was on it for a while,” said Jeff. “She kept answering all these questions. My dad and I knew who she was talking to, and she finally gave us a thumbs up.

“It was pure joy,” he said.

Then it was time to begin preparing. Already in the middle of midterms, Jeff had just three weeks to prepare for a trip to Los Angeles for the taping of the 2012 Teen Tournament. His father modified an online computer game so that Jeff was able to practice Teen Tournaments, and the sophomore also spent a lot of time just hitting the books.

Sony flew the Haylons to California on February 19, and filming began the following day. Teenagers and their parents were put up at the Hilton, and the Haylons spent some of their free time away from the studio doing some sightseeing.

“I saw the Pacific Ocean, and we walked along the Walk of Fame. Between that, and the New York trip,” when the Haylons saw a Broadway show and visited the Empire State Building in addition to Jeff’s time at the auditions, “Jeopardy has already given me a lot of extras,” he said.

Meeting the other Teen Tournament contestants was a big moment. Sixteen teenagers are brought in for the tournament, 15 for the competition and one who serves as an alternate (although no alternate, as of last year, has ever been called up to the game).

“I will admit, when I first saw that group I was a little intimidated. I was the second youngest person there, and this group just exuded intelligence,” said Jeff. The group was given a backstage tour, and then everyone ran though three short games again, in large part to get used to the buzzers that are used when a contestant wants to take a turn at posing a question to game show host Alex Trebek’s answer.

“After the material that we were challenged with, which wasn’t too obscure but was certainly difficult, the buzzer timing was the hardest part of the competition,” Jeff said.  

Contestants were selected at random, and Jeff was picked to compete in the first group.

“That placement could go both ways,” he said. “I got it done and out of the way, so I got it out of the way and couldn’t get too nervous. But we were first. That was nerve-wracking.”

The tapings in February will make up the first set of shows for the Teen Tournament. The second set of shows were being taped this week.

In addition to Jeff, the Teen Challenge pool was filled with one contestant each from Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Oregon, two contestants each from Kentucky and Texas, and three from California. The contestants have stayed in touch thanks to Facebook, and most were planning to attend the taping this week in Washington, D.C.

“It’s kinda nice to find so many people who think like you,” Jeff said. “I was awed to be in some of their presence.

“These are some of the people who are going to run the country. It was mind-blowing.”

Other than the standard question of “How much did you win?,” Jeff says there is another question that has also been asked of him: How does the Teen Tournament work?

“The tournament’s games are formatted exactly the same way as the regular programming,” he said. The difference between tournament play (whether Teen Tournament, College Championship or Tournament of Champions) and regular play is that a pool of 16 contestants plays for a ten-game period for a tournament.

Tournaments put three contestants against each other during the first five days (the quarterfinals) of the ten-day event, producing five semifinalists (each day’s winner) and four wildcard semifinalists (the highest scorers among nonwinners). The 2012 Teen Tournament quarterfinals will be aired Monday through Friday, April 30–May 4.

Three semifinal games the following week (May 7–9) then produce three finalists, who then compete in a two-game final. The 2012 finals will be aired Thursday and Friday, May 10–11.

So here it is, less than ten days until Jeff Haylon will be appearing on Jeopardy! Will Newtown be seeing him just once, on April 30, or are there subsequent episodes that the high school sophomore will be seen on?

Even his siblings — older brother Chris and older sister Nicki — have to wait to find out that answer.

“They do not know,” he said. “They have no idea how I did because I can’t talk about this with anyone who doesn’t live with me.

“And technically, right now, they don’t.”

Jeopardy! airs on ABC-TV (WTNH-TV locally) weeknights at 7 pm.