{"id":8416,"date":"2026-01-27T19:15:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/?p=8416"},"modified":"2026-01-27T19:15:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:15:23","slug":"princeton-band-teacher-steven-olson-competes-on-jeopardy-shawlocal-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/?p=8416","title":{"rendered":"Princeton band teacher Steven Olson competes on \u2018Jeopardy!\u2019 – shawlocal.com"},"content":{"rendered":"


Steven Olson, band teacher at Princeton High School and Logan Junior High, met Jeopardy host Ken Jennings (left) when he taped a show in August in Los Angeles. The show will air on Friday, Sept. 19. <\/span>(Photo provided by Steven Olson)
What local band teacher will appear on \u201cJeopardy!\u201d on Friday, Sept. 19?
Answer: Who is Steven Olson?
Olson grew up in Moline watching the popular game show \u201cJeopardy!\u201d all the time, playing along with the contestants.
In August, he played for real.
The Princeton<\/a> High School and Elementary Schools band teacher had a dream come true when he got invited to be a \u201cJeopardy!\u201d contestant on the Sony Pictures Lot in Los Angeles, which was taped in August. The episode will air Sept. 19.
\u201cI\u2019ve been watching since I was a kid. I watched it every day for several years,\u201d Olson said. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved trivia. That\u2019s just kind of how my brain works. Things seem to stick. I\u2019ve always been a fact guy. That\u2019s how I always was as a kid, too. So I\u2019ve just enjoyed watching it.\u201d
He called it an \u201cincredible, surreal experience,\u201d and as he told his wife, Megan, \u201cthe second best day of my life.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019ve always loved trivia. That\u2019s just kind of how my brain works. Things seem to stick. I\u2019ve always been a fact guy.\u201d
To get on \u201cJeopardy!\u201d is a process, Olson said. He took the test online, which he said is a general knowledge quiz that you can take once a year.
\u201cIf you meet some type of criteria that isn\u2019t public, you may get invited to take the test again live on Zoom, where they proctor you and make sure you\u2019re not cheating,\u201d he said.
Olson said you can be invited, \u201ceverything\u2019s a \u2018can be,\u2019 to a Zoom audition where you do a little mock game play and they interview you, kind of test you on the TV wording, I guess.
\u201cFrom there, you get put in the contestant pool and you\u2019re eligible to be invited to the show for a given amount of time. I got very, very lucky because a huge amount of people try out for this every year.\u201d
Steven Olson, band teacher at Princeton High School and Logan Junior High, lived a dream come true when he was selected to appear as a contestant on Jeopardy. The show was taped in August and will air on Friday, Sept. 19. <\/span>(Photo contributed by Steven Olson)
Olson, 31, who is in his 10th year as band teacher at PHS and eighth at Logan, said \u201cJeopardy!\u201d is much harder to play on TV than it appears at home.
\u201cIt\u2019s not comparable at all,\u201d he said. \u201cThe pressure is very real. Just seeing the stage in person is mind-blowing. And doing it in real life just goes by so fast. So much of it is the timing. The thing I learned when I was preparing for the show, 80% of the time all three people know the answer, and it\u2019s all about the timing and buzzing in and the rhythm and parsing out the clues on time.\u201d
Olson spent a lot of time preparing for the show, playing a lot of practice games online to prepare his trigger finger on the buzzer.
\u201cI practiced my buzzing quite a bit and watched it at home, and played it every day. Did a lot of reading on what past contestants have done and I studied to the best that I could,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a website where people have recorded every clue they\u2019ve ever asked. So you can search what they\u2019ve asked in the past and kind of get an idea of what\u2019s likely to come up. But you have no idea what will come up in the game that you tape.\u201d
Olson got to meet host Ken Jennings, who took over the role after the death of legend Alex Trebek in 2020, during pregame rehearsals.
\u201cHe was so nice and so down-to-earth,\u201d Olson said. \u201cHe was funny, too.\u201d
The results of the show are kept top secret. Olson said the only people who know how it turned out are Megan, a couple of friends who made the trip, and his parents.
\u201cWe are very much expected to keep the results a wrap until it airs on the 19th,\u201d he said.
The news of his appearance spread fast when Olson was allowed to share on social media.
\u201cThe students are extremely excited,\u201d he said. \u201cI really didn\u2019t have to say anything to the students because word travels fast. [Principal] Zach Smith at Logan actually emailed the whole building, so that accelerated the process a little bit.\u201d
The show will air on KWQC, Channel 6, at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 19, while he is preparing to strike up the PHS marching band for the Tigers\u2019 home game with Kewanee. It\u2019s also available the next day on Hulu and Peacock. The Olsons plan to host a watch party Sept. 20.
Kevin has been sports editor of the BCR since 1986 and is Sports Editor of Putnam County Record. Was previously sports editor of the St. Louis Daily News and a regular contributor for the St. Louis Cardinals Magazine. He is a member of the IBCA and Illinois Valley Hall of Fames. He is one of 4 sportswriters from his tiny hometown Atlanta, IL<\/p>\n

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Steven Olson, band teacher at Princeton High School and Logan Junior High, met Jeopardy host Ken Jennings (left) when he taped a show in August in Los Angeles. The show will air on Friday, Sept. 19. (Photo provided by Steven Olson)What local band teacher will appear on \u201cJeopardy!\u201d on Friday, Sept. 19? Answer: Who is Steven Olson? Olson grew up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}