Plymouth Regional Beats Prospect Mountain High

DURHAM, NH (February 7, 2025) - The Plymouth Regional High Bobcats beat the Prospect Mountain High Timberwolves 360-220 in the first game of Round One in season 43 of Granite State Challenge.

The Plymouth Bobcats—coached by drafting teacher Jay Fogarty and world languages teacher Troy Harris—were led by 12th grader and team captain Reagan Sutherland, 12th graders Norm Sackett and Max Shamansky and 10th grader Yuriy Paul. The school’s alternates were 12th grader Mason Glew and 10th grader Abe Hankens. Plymouth Regional High School enrolls 658 students from Plymouth, Ashland, Holderness, Campton, Rumney, Wentworth, Ellsworth, Waterville Valley and Thornton.

On the other side of the match-up stood the Prospect Mountain High Timberwolves. Led by coach Amanda Vanderlinde, a social studies teacher, the Timberwolves team was made up of 11th grade captain Loralie Chase, 10th grader Jude Dumond, 9th grader Lucas Lund and 11th grader Liam Conway. Prospect Mountain High is located in Belknap County and enrolls 496 students from Alton and Barnstead.

ROUND ONE

Plymouth’s Reagan Sutherland answered the first three questions correctly and took the Bobcats out to an early 30-point lead, but the Timberwolves caught up with quick answers by Loralie Chase and Lucas Lund.

Reagan, participating in her third Granite State Challenge season, showed her experience and continued to come up with correct answers, while Max Shamansky and Norm Sackett Padded the Bobcats lead with their own correct answers to keep the lead.

“She's a great player. And I was just happy that our entire team had input and Reagan did great, but they all came through. One of our new players, Yuriy, had a big turnaround question in the last round there,” said Plymouth’s coach, Jay Fogarty, post-game.

Prospect Mountain High’s Lucas Lund came in late in the round with a clutch answer of “Thomas Jefferson” for a question about who sold their library to Congress to replace the collection destroyed by the British in the War of 1812 and drew the Timberwolves closer to the Bobcats.

Plymouth ended the round with a lead of 120-60.

ROUND TWO – THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT

In the Three Strikes and You're Out Round, each team picks a 10-question category and each team member, starting with the captain, gets one question. The team continues to answer questions until they miss three questions. Each team also has three passes in each round. If a team answers all 10 questions correctly, they pick up an additional 10 points.

The Bobcats widened their lead in the second round as the questions rotated from person to person and Plymouth got 60 points before striking out.

The younger Prospect Mountain team struck out with 10 points after Liam Conway answered a question right, and though they fell behind in the second round, they continued to answer confidently and decisively while chasing the comeback in subsequent rounds.

The round ended with the Bobcats ahead, 180-70.

ROUND THREE – 60-SECOND ROUND

In the 60-Second Round alternates join their teams. Each team picks a ten-question category and has 60 seconds to answer the questions. If they answer all ten correctly, teams get a 10-point bonus. Team members can confer in the round, but the captain answers.

Prospect Mountain was given the first choice of categories since they were trailing. They opted for J Jams. All of the answers in the category were people whose names contained two letter J’s.

The Timberwolves answered five of the ten questions correctly and got within 60 points of the Bobcats, but Plymouth still had its 60-second round to go with the chance to retake a commanding lead.

The Bobcats used the time they had while the Timberwolves answered their J-Jams to brainstorm ideas for their chosen category, “Love U.”

In their category, all of the answers were words starting with the letter U. Captain Reagan answered eight of the ten questions correctly for the team to extend the Bobcats’ lead to 260-120.

“We brainstormed some ‘U’ words before I had a couple of dumb moments where I passed because I got nervous with the time limit, but they all helped me out, which was really awesome,” Reagan said.

FINAL ROUND – TOSS-UP

In the final round of the game, each correct answer is worth 20 points, but teams lose 20 points with an incorrect answer, and a lead can be easily lost or gained in the round.

This final round between the Bobcats and Timberwolves was a battle between the teams.

Lucas Lund started off hot and scored 100 points with five correct answers for Prospect before answering a question wrong.

“That was a super good Prospect Mountain team, we played. One of their players, Lucas, just lit it up in the fourth round, and they're really aggressive in the fourth round, which made us sit there, wondering how it's going to play out,” said coach Fogarty. “It came down to the wire, and then there was a Unitil power question in there that swung in their favor, so it was touch-and-go in the last round. And that’s what really kept us on edge.”

The Bobcats felt the pressure, and their players stepped up late in the round. Reagan got a few questions right and then Yuriy secured a 360-220 win for Plymouth by correctly spelling the word “pneumonia” after Prospect lost 20 points after leaving out the letter “U”.

The Timberwolves were defeated, but not down. They are looking forward to returning stronger next year as most of their players are underclassmen who are eligible to keep competing.

“I think that you know they prepared hard. They practiced, they did really well, and they deserved the win. So, you know we did our best, but ultimately the better team won,” said Prospect Mountain coach
coach Vanderlinde. “We were just happy to even go on and win the wildcard. We knew we had a young team, most of the questions, I think, are eleventh and twelfth grade.”

“I feel like I did pretty good. I'm a little sad that we lost, but I'm confident that we will be back next year and hopefully next year, we'll win the big trophies. And also, for the record, I am what my hat says,” Lund said proudly, with a hat that read “Nerd.”

The Bobcats will move on to the next round against the winner of the second match between the Souhegan High Sabers and the Trinity High Pioneers on Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 8:30 p.m. on New Hampshire PBS. In the meantime, the Plymouth team is going bowling to let off some steam and prepare for the next match.

“It feels amazing that it was pretty close going into then. And then, like just as it kept going on, I'm like, ‘wow, we're actually gonna win this,’” said Isaac Reeder.

Catch the next game of GRANITE STATE CHALLENGE premiering on Thursday, February 13th at 8:30 p.m. on NHPBS. You can also stream it on the PBS App, the NHPBS YouTube channel, or online at nhpbs.org/gsc.

ABOUT GRANITE STATE CHALLENGE HOST: Hosted by Bow High School teacher and former Granite State Challenge coach (Bedford High), contestant (Belmont High) and Granite State Challenge crew member, Jon Cannon. Granite State Challenge features some of New Hampshire's brightest high school students as they demonstrate remarkable teamwork, quick thinking, and smarts to beat the clock and buzz in first on this iconic New Hampshire game show. The game emphasizes quick recall of math, science, social studies, language arts, and fine arts facts—along with questions about current events, entertainment, sports and New Hampshire.

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