Lakewood Ranch resident earns Jeopardy! college finals

Nineteen-year-old Hannah Sage is a self-proclaimed trivia junkie, and now she gets to show off her talent on a huge scale.

On Tuesday, Sage won the semifinal round of the Jeopardy! College Championship to advance to the two-day finals Thursday and Friday.

Sage answered a question about Russian culture with the correct answer — The Nutcracker — and wagered enough to win the competition by $1 at $28,401. She was in the lead going into Final Jeopardy!

Three students advance to the finals with the overall winner getting $100,000. Second place receives $50,000 and third place gets $25,000.

Sage said she grew up watching “Jeopardy!” with her family every night and playing games like Trivial Pursuit.

Her passion for learning has paid off, earning the sophomore University of Central Florida student a chance to compete in the College Championship. She and her mother, Ellen Sage, traveled to California in March for taping of the college tournament.

“It was so much fun,” Hannah Sage said of the experience. “I’d do it again. I’d get to play again, which is the most fun part.”

Sage won the first quarterfinal episode, which aired April 9, and advanced to the semifinals.

During high school at St. Stephens Episcopal School, Sage competed with the school’s trivia team. She knew she wanted to do trivia in college and joined UCF’s Quiz Bowl Team, which practices twice per week. She and her friends go to a local burger joint at UCF for its weekly trivia night.

So when “Jeopardy” opened its online test for the college tournament, it seemed natural to try. Sage and some friends performed well enough to be invited to an audition in November 2017 in Atlanta, where they took a written test and were interviewed.

They returned to campus, knowing they would receive a call only if they were invited to compete. The odds were slim, so when Sage saw a California phone number pop up on her cell phone, she did not suspect anything.

“I don’t know anyone in California,” she said. “I didn’t answer the phone.”

Then, she listened to the message. She had been selected.

“It was amazing,” she said. “I distinctly remember jumping around my room.”

Over the years, “Jeopardy!” has been a Sage family staple. Growing up in her home in the Summerfield section of Lakewood Ranch, Hannah and her parents, Ellen and Adam, would watch the show.

“It was a part of our family nightly routine,” Ellen Sage said. “It’s generational. She’s been a little bit of a prodigy her whole life. My husband and I are both teachers. She spent a lot of time around adults and teachers. We’re a little bit competitive.”

When her parents moved in with Hannah’s grandparents, Linda and Norman Sage, in Sarasota about a year ago, the tradition continued. Hannah Sage would watch it with the whole family on her trips home from college. At UCF, she watches the program with her friends.

“It’s always on,” Sage said. “Every since I was little, I thought I want to do that one day. Getting to meet Alex Trebek was a dream.”

In its 34th season, “Jeopardy!” has 23 million weekly viewers.

“I wasn’t nervous about the fact I was on TV,” Sage said. "I was nervous abut the fact I was going to be playing. I wanted to do my best. I wanted to make my friends and family proud. I was just nervous about that.”

Through being on the show, Hannah also learned things she never knew from watching it, like the 30-minute program is filmed live with breaks included. During the commercial breaks, Trebek fields audience questions or may reshoot a line he misspoke.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into filming an episode,” she said. “Everybody who worked there was super nice.”

She also learned the rules of “Jeopardy!” are different than her typical trivia challenges, where she normally can “buzz” in as soon as she knows the answer. On “Jeopardy!” Trebek must completely finish the question. Then, a light turns on and contestants can push their buttons.

Sage said she and the other contestants agreed they hated the buzzers.

“It was hard to figure out the timing,” she said.

But Sage’s strategy has always been to answer only when she is confident in her guess. She’d rather miss out on answering the question than get it wrong and lose points.

Overall, however, the fun is in trivia itself.

“I’ve always liked to learn,” Hannah Sage said. “I was always that kid who was reading a book. I’ve been interested in learning as much as possible. Trivia is a way to do that.”

Sage plans to use her winnings to do some traveling and help pay for medical school.