The Salisbury High School Scholastic Scrimmage team took the championship title in a competition against Parkland High School May 23.

The final score was Salisbury 245, Parkland 195. This is the first title for Salisbury since 1979.

Scholastic Scrimmage, PBS 39’s longest-running on-air program, has teams of four high school students face each other as the host quizzes them in all academic disciplines.

Scholastic Scrimmage is hosted by Dr. Karen Walton, vice president of academics at DeSales University.

There were 30 teams competing this year from area high schools.

Advisors for the SHS team are teachers Joe Pacitti and Paul Koba.

Members of the SHS team include Benjamin Wiener, Owen Mendes, Jacob Glenister and Nathan Reed.

Salisbury students on the team practiced 7 a.m. once a week and also during Falcon periods and physics classes.

Jacob has been on the team for three years and is the captain. Nathan has also been on the team for three years with one of those years on the television team. This is the first year for Owen who moved to Salisbury from Palmerton this year.

Jacob, Owen and Nathan sat down for an interview with The Press May 30.

“Certainly it was exciting,” Jacob said of the win.

Jacob said much of the success with Scholastic Scrimmage is memorization.

The team said literature questions and answers are memorized and practiced continually.

“Linear algebra was the most difficult category,” Jacob said.

“History is our strongest category followed by science,” Nathan said.

“It was surprising,” Owen said of the win. He is pleased being at Salisbury which he said has more resources available than his former district.

The team won a big trophy and a $4,000 scholarship.

Owen is the only student who will remain on the team as the other members of the team graduate this year.

“I am proud of them,” Koba said. “I thought we’d go far this year. I didn’t think we’d go this far.”

Nathan encouraged new members to join the team because, “it’s fun. Stress is part of the enjoyment.”