Sophia Weng, a junior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, will appear on the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament next week. She’s slated to compete in the quarterfinals on Wednesday against two other teens from Georgia and Ohio. 

She’s always been a fan of trivia. “I do a bunch of competitions at my high school—Science Bowl, Quiz Bowl,” the 16 year old Chevy Chase resident says.

Surprisingly, Weng only began watching Jeopardy! when she was studying for Quiz Bowl. “I’d just been into trivia” beforehand, she explains.

So when she and her friends saw the teen Jeopardy! test, they decided to give it a try. “We all scored really well,” she says. Weng was then selected to come in and audition, mentioning, “it was so fun; I had a really good audition.”

Her audition really must have been good, because she was asked to come to Culver City, California, to tape the show, where she got to meet 14 other teens from all around the country. The entire competition has already been taped. Her first match Wednesday is one of five quarterfinals episodes next week—there are two more rounds following that before one winner takes the crown. The prize? $100,000. 

With that kind of money on the line and a giant audience for the show, Weng admits, “I was a bit nervous … I felt some pressure.” 

One of her favorite parts of the experience were the friendships she’d made with other competitors. “We still have a group chat,” she says. She hopes to reconnect with—and maybe even compete against—her friends from Jeopardy! in future Quiz Bowl tournaments.

The Jeopardy! Teen Tournament airs Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. on WJLA.