Longtime Illinois Band Teacher To Compete On “Jeopardy!”

We have a contestant to cheer on in "Jeopardy!" this week.

There's nothing like watching "Jeopardy!" to make me realize how much I don't actually know and that I should never play trivia.

But luckily, that's not the case for one longtime local band teacher.

Steven Olson, who teaches at Princeton High School and Logan Elementary, will be a contestant on "Jeopardy!" this Friday.

Our friends at KWQC will air the show Friday, September 19th at 4:30 p.m. Olsen told Quad Cities Live that he taped the show back in August at the Sony Pictures Studio in L.A.

Getting on "Jeopardy!" was not easy for the longtime fan of the show. He said it was a multi-step process to get on the show, one that involved online testing, live proctoring, and a Zoom audition.

Steven says being on the actual show was a lot more intense than playing at home and it was really fast-paced. He studied past shows and practiced buzzer timing before he went to L.A.

He can't share the results but you can see what he had to say in KWQC's interview with him this week:

If you can't watch Steven's "Jeopardy!" episode on Friday, it will also be streaming on Hulu and Peacock the day after, on September 20th.

As you can probably guess, his students are really proud of him and his family is hosting a watch party on September 20th.

It's really competitive to get on "Jeopardy!", with the acceptance rate normally around 0.3% to 0.5% of applicants.