Athletes hate silver medals. McKayla Maroney made the sentiment famous back in 2012 with her “not impressed” face--she was thiiiiis close to the gold and yet it eluded her. She was a loser. Well, I know that second place isn’t always for losers, because I’ve won it, and it meant as much to me as each of my three first-place wins in the same event.

It all started back when I was a freshman. I had just graduated from the middle school Academic Challenge team with both team and individual first-place medals, and I was ready for more. I rushed to the high school Quiz Bowl team before the coaches had even announced our first practice. I learned what questions Quiz Bowl games tend to ask. I learned how to buzz quickly but accurately. By the time our first tournament rolled around, I was the only freshman on our team of seniors. We weren’t undefeated, but we definitely won more games than we lost. We were going strong when MSHSAA Districts rolled around.

At Districts we were up against seven other schools, including the host school. The fact that three of them didn’t show up made our job somewhat easier, but we would still likely have some tough battles to fight. As it turned out, we only had one in the preliminaries: Eureka. They kicked our butts. Or, more specifically, their captain kicked our butts. He was just inhuman. He knew every author, every work of art and music, and every event from history. He would finish his calculations practically before I managed to start them. The moderator was calling on “Eureka--Chris!” more often (or so it seemed) than everybody else combined. We knew we stood no chance. After our dinner break/team bonding, we went into the elimination rounds. We beat our semifinal opponent easily. Then came the finals.

We were facing Eureka again. We sharpened our pencils, got fresh sheets of paper for calculations, and started chatting with Eureka. Then the MSHSAA representative came in to give out the individual medals from the preliminary rounds. First place went to Chris (big surprise). Second place, though...when the representative read “Second place, Erin Neely of Parkway South”, the entire team smiled. I wasn’t inhumanly good like Chris, but other than him I was the most valuable player at districts. When we sat down to start, the moderator told us to test our buzzers and introduce ourselves by name, school and grade level: Allyson Lotz, Eureka, junior...Chris something-or-other, Eureka, senior...Aditya Patel, Parkway South, senior...Maya Mills, Parkway South, senior...Erin Neely, Parkway South, freshman.

I could feel every watching eyebrow raised. What was a freshman doing winning the individual silver at Districts? When the final game started, I showed them. Probably two out of every three questions went to Chris, but I still snagged quite a few, including one that I knew specifically because I was a freshman. The moderator asked what shape inscribed in a circle has its hypotenuse as the diameter, and I pounced: “Right triangle.” Because I got it so early, I even got 15 points for that one instead of 10. At the end of the match, though, Eureka had still beaten us by a lot. Ah, well. You can’t expect to win when your opponent has a walking encyclopedia for a player. He even told us after the match that he browsed Wikipedia in his free time. He took home the gold, and Eureka took home the team gold through him.

But everybody from Parkway South was smiling. We had won a team silver and an individual silver, which were basically gold since actually winning the gold wasn’t humanly possible against Chris. And I was only a freshman competing against seniors. Was I disappointed that we hadn’t actually won? Yeah. Did I feel like I let the seniors down by not being inhumanly good enough to help them take their last chance to qualify for state? Yeah. But unlike McKayla Maroney, I was very impressed. I would go on to win three individual golds and help my team win three more silvers during my sophomore and junior years, But as I got better and my godlike opponent left, they didn’t really mean any more. Winning is relative. Second place can be for winners.