Sam Deutsch, who grew up in Bethesda and graduated from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, will appear in the two-episode finals of the Jeopardy! College Championship to be broadcast Thursday and Friday nights.
Deutsch, a junior at the University of Southern California, made it to the finals after winning quarter-final and semifinal contests with strategic bets that put him $1 ahead of his competitors. The former member of the Richard Montgomery It’s Academic trivia team has an opportunity to win the tournament’s $100,000 grand prize. He will compete against two women—Sarah Dubnik of the University of Pittsburgh and Nikki Peters of the University of California, Berkeley.
Deutsch, who declared he was a huge Kanye West fan while responding to personal questions from host Alex Trebek on Tuesday night’s semifinals episode, told Bethesda Beat last week he prepared for the long-running TV trivia show by reading a book by famous Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings and by watching old episodes while using a pen as a simulated buzzer.
Correction: The grand prize number was incorrect in an earlier version of this story. It’s $100,000, not $1 million.