Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : 8 Students From Hart High Win National ‘Quiz Bowl’ : Competition: It is the first victory in five tries for the school. Team had been considered a long shot in the American Challenge.

Winning a national “quiz bowl” feels almost as good as not being in school, according to Val Williams, a junior at William S. Hart High School.

Val was one of eight Hart students greeted by school cheerleaders and faculty members when they returned Wednesday evening with the first-place trophy from the American Challenge National Invitational Tournament held in Nashville.

The Hart team had been considered a long shot to beat 15 teams from other public and private schools that had qualified for the three-day competition that ended Tuesday.

“In the semifinals, we beat the top-ranked team in the country,” said Lori Huenink, the team’s academic coach. “They were as stunned as we were.”

Four-student teams answered questions in a game-show format, trying to give the correct answer before the opposing team. The questions covered history, science and a variety of other topics.

“It was any obscure fact you could think of,” said Cheryl Cina, a junior at Hart.

The tournament is one of five national academic competitions, including four “quiz bowl” contests and an academic decathlon, Huenink said. The decathlon requires students to write essays on books that they have been given.

Hart has competed five times in academic tournaments. It placed fifth in the inaugural Nashville tournament last year, but never had won a competition before.

The team also included Christian Edstrom, David Golombek, Sharon Armstrong, Brian Johnson, Oliver Bajracharya and Sarah Cunningham.

The school received $1,500 for winning the tournament, plus $500 for community service during the Northridge earthquake, which will be used to pay for some of the team’s travel expenses, officials said.

Teams qualified for the Nashville competition by submitting an essay on ideas to help the country and a resume of the school’s participation in previous academic bowls, Hart Principal Laurence Strauss said. The members of the Hart team are students in a special class who receive school credit for preparing for such competitions.

Christian, a senior, said students have been arriving at school at 7 a.m. each day to spend an hour quizzing each other and preparing for the competition. He said students also studied during their lunch hour.

He said he has no intention of letting all of his hours of studying obscure facts go to waste, even though he won’t be able to compete next year.

“It makes for great stuff at cocktail parties,” he said.