FHS takes Scholars’ Bowl top prize
Under the leadership of team captain Roshan Ramanan, FHS managed to dethrone last year’s champ, Webb School of Knoxville, during the semifinals, or “Philosophical 4” round. Farragut went on to defeat Dobyns-Bennett High School in the championship game.
Team members Roshan, his sister, Nisha Ramanan, Sophia Chen, Arman Oguz and Leyton Lu were presented with the Bowl’s Frank Miller Memorial Trophy Wednesday, Feb. 25, by Tennessee Scholar’s Bowl executive producer Ernie Roberts and show host and head writer Frank Murphy, both of East Tennessee PBS, which produces and broadcasts the show.
Additional team members are Uday Sujithkumar, Evan Conger and Jared Li.
In addition to the trophy, the team won $1,000, which team sponsor Tiffany Booker said would be at least partially used “to purchase new buzzers for training purposes.”
“We worked on our buzzer skills a lot in preparation for this year’s Bowl,” noted Roshan, a junior, who said the team also looked at previous questions and Bowl episodes to be on top of their game.
Each game consisted of four students answering questions in literature, language, math, science, art, geography, music, sports, history and religion, and other subjects.
As the team began preparing for the current season, Roshan “showed true leadership skills,” Booker said, as he reached out to Roberts when their previous sponsor had to step away from the role due to personal reasons.
“Roshan contacted me, because we had worked with the [FHS] SGA, when they helped out with the Love Kitchen, and he knew who to reach out to and where,” Roberts noted.
“They got in just under the wire!”
Roshan, who has been a member of the Scholars’ Bowl team since he was a ninth-grader at Farragut High School — when FHS began competing in the event again the previous year following a brief hiatus — was modest in his assessment of the bowl itself.
“It was a true team effort,” he said. “We have strong members.”
While the shows were recorded last fall, the programs began airing on East Tennessee PBS Jan. 12, and are continuing through March 19, when the championship game will be broadcast. The Bowl was conducted in a single elimination style. The “Threshold of 32” ran Feb. 5- 26; the “Smart 16” began Feb, 27 and will run through March 10; the “Educated 8” will be shown March 11-16; the “Philosophical 4” will run March 17-18; and the championship game will air March 19.
All broadcast times are weekdays at 5:30 p.m.
The Tennessee Scholars’ Bowl featured students from public, private, parochial and home schoolers from Anderson, Blount, Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Jefferson, Knox, McMinn, Monroe, Roane, Scott, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington counties in Tennessee, as well as Whitley County in Kentucky, according to a press release.
Recent Tennessee Scholars’ Bowl champions include Hardin Valley Academy in 2024 and 2021, Cedar Springs Homeschool (2020 and 2019), Webb School of Knoxville
in 2018 and 2025; and FHS in 2017.
