MARYSVILLE – Playing before the hometown fans for the first time this year, he was a little nervous.

But since he has a year of experience he felt he could handle the pressure.

He stretched before the big game – not his body but his mind.

Marysville-Pilchuck High School senior Logan Plant looked through Time magazine just before the start of the Hi-Q match in M-P’s auditorium Feb. 24. It must have paid off as he got the answer to the very first question right on Current Events, “The United States of Jihad.” The question was about a new book that terrorism really isn’t that big of problem in the country, but the fear of it is.

The Tomahawks started the season with two away matches.

“I’m more nervous at home when there’s a thousand people you know,” Plant admitted.

Stanwood won the match with 42 points, followed by M-P with 28 and Marysville Getchell with 23.

New M-P coach Amy Armstrong said she has an inexperienced team, with only two returnees. She has seven members on her team, and they are assigned to different categories, according to their academic strengths.

“My girls are especially nervous,” she said.

While they cram just before the event, no notes or other help is allowed onstage.

“We don’t pat them down for cells phones” however, Regional Hi-Q Coordinator Dave Korkowski said jokingly.

In Hi-Q, there are questions in 16 categories: Current events, American History, Biology, Literature, Math, Shakespeare, Geography, Chemistry, Art History, Team Choice, Team Choice Toss-up, Physics, Government, World History and Math Toss-Up.

Each of the three teams gets a question in each category. They get four points if they get the answer right the first time, three the second, two the third and one the fourth – all in 15 seconds. If they don’t get it right, the other teams can steal and get a point with the right answer. On this day, MG dominated that part of the contest.

Each team consists of up to 10 players, but only four are onstage at a time. There is a halftime break when substitutions are made.

At the break, Stanwood led with 26, followed by M-P with 18 and MG with 14.

The highlight of the first half was when Plant and his team figured out a complex math problem just before the 60-second buzzer went off. The crowd of hundreds of students went wild.

M-P also got the last question right, a math toss-up query, to clinch second place over rival MG.

Korkowski said M-P last won the event in 2009, and is back now for its second year, after taking some time off.

He said Hi-Q is better than Knowledge Bowl and other academic competitions because students can go to the events.

“They can root for academics the same way they can root for volleyball or basketball,” he said.

Korkowski likes that students in the audience try to see how many of the answers they know.

“The best part is getting back to class and some kid you don’t think gives a hoot about academics says, ‘I knew three of the answers,’” he said.

Korkowski said he is amazed at how brave Hi-Q students are. He said most students are afraid to go onstage during an assembly because they are afraid they would look dumb.

“These kids really could look dumb,” he said.