The Passion of Latin Lovers

Velchik is president of Virginia's JCL chapter, which means that every night of the convention he has to run "fellowship," a state meeting that starts around 11:30 and doesn't end till after midnight. He also helps lead Virginia's cheers during the daily spirit competition -- 15 minutes of screaming deafening rounds of "Boom shaka-laka" and "Ecce Romani!" (the name of a textbook, it means "Behold the Romans") -- to try to win the convention's spirit award for the fifth year in a row, which would secure Virginia a coveted spot in the NJCL hall of fame. As a joke, he periodically broke into Latin as we talked.

Emma Leahy, who's going into the 10th grade, is the team's all-around player. Blond, serious and home-schooled (she takes Latin through the Classical Cottage School), Leahy is younger than the other players, and probably the most intense -- she signed up for all but two of the convention's 15 academic tests and entered 14 projects into competitions, including an animated video of the myth of Echo and Narcissus set to Kelly Clarkson's "Walk Away." "When I talk to my friends I do Latin with, and we think, 'What did we do before we did Latin?' we can't remember," she says. "I think I'd probably be pretty bored."

That seems unlikely -- in addition to Latin, Leahy studies French, Italian, German, Spanish and ancient Greek; plays piano and viola; and hopes to someday be a veterinarian (her family has two dogs, two cats, four chickens and four goats). She's an only child. She's been taking Latin since fifth grade and playing certamen since sixth. And she's always been her teams' youngest player.

"I remember coming in one time in sixth grade and playing against guys with facial hair," she says. "People made fun of us because they said we were like babies."

"So, what'd you do?" I ask her.

"Well," she says, matter-of-factly, "we just beat them."

Leahy is also the only girl on Virginia's upper-level team (certamen teams are primarily male) except for an alternate, Becca Baird-Remba, a rising senior at Flint Hill whom Covington describes as one of the best mythology students "probably in the country."

This year, though, the team's mythologist spot went to Imran Husain, a rising senior at Park View High School in Loudoun County. Husain has been taking Latin only since ninth grade, and this is the first year he's competed with his upper-level teammates at the national level. In competition, Husain seems quiet and shy, always sitting at the end of the table and tensing up every time Covington comes onstage before the round to give each player a supportive shoulder squeeze. But, in fact, he's outgoing and extremely competitive -- not to mention well-rounded. He plays soccer, football and basketball, competes in debate and "It's Academic," and is a member of the National Honor Society and a math honor society. He goes to Loudoun's Academy of Science every other day, and is doing his senior project on parthenogenesis -- reproduction without fertilization.

I ask him why he looks so miserable at the beginning of every certamen round.

"Nervousness is a recurring theme for me," he says. "I'm always nervous, no matter how well prepared I am." Husain has compiled a study packet for himself that contains nearly every certamen question that he has ever gotten wrong, and he -- along with Velchik -- loves to talk strategy. As he puts it, "You can hustle people in certamen more than you can in pool."

Regardless of your hustling skills, though, if you want to be good at certamen, you have to study. Individual habits vary wildly -- Leahy has at least 10 bulging notebooks, and says that she'll occasionally study for entire days ("But only during the summer and on weekends," she assures me). Fredericksen, on the other hand, says he does most of his preparation during the bus rides to certamen matches.

Some states simply host certamen competitions during the academic year, but serious states, such as Virginia, Florida and Texas, also use the summer to prepare for nationals. (With 35 novice, intermediate or upper-level national championships, Virginia has the most certamen titles; its nearest rival, Florida, has 17.) Virginia's team meets for the two weeks preceding the convention in an optional training program known as Castra Latina -- Latin camp. For five hours a day, players and their coaches review facts, work on speed and learn how to play well as a team. That last part can be tough because, until that point, students have been playing for their schools, not for their states -- which means that they're used to competing against one another, not with one another. But this isn't much of a challenge for Virginia's upper-level team members. With the exception of Husain, they've been playing together at nationals for years.