The Passion of Latin Lovers

That's part of the reason why so much is at stake. Back in 2004, when Fredericksen and Velchik were rising ninth-graders and Leahy had just finished sixth grade, they played together on Virginia's novice team and won the national championship. Since then they haven't made it past the semifinals. In 2005, they got knocked out of the intermediate-level semis not by a traditional powerhouse such as Florida or Texas but by Oklahoma. (To put this in context, in the 36-year history of certamen, Oklahoma has reached the finals one other time -- in 1982.) The upset still has Virginia fans shaking their heads. This year, competing on the upper level, with three of the original four players still on the team, they're all eager to bring the championship back home.

THE CONVENTION'S FIRST CERTAMEN EVENT -- a mandatory orientation meeting for players-- conflicts with the pool party and evening dance, but it's still packed. In a large auditorium filled with students and coaches, teams wait to draw for their initial brackets and hear updates on the rules. Though certamen's structure is straightforward, it is nuanced enough to warrant a six-page document outlining 18 procedures and regulations. It is, as Laurie Covington whispers to me, "geek hell."

The first round of competitive certamen -- each round has 20 questions -- overlaps with the convention's ultimate Frisbee competition (part of the convention's "ludi," or "games") and the evening dance -- a hoedown with the tagline "Carpe Denim" -- but the auditorium is still crowded with spectators from each of the three competing states.

Virginia's upper-level team is facing Ohio and Wisconsin, and the players seem nervous. Velchik is frenetically tapping a foot. Though Husain is relatively expressionless, he later acknowledges that before each match he has to consciously try not to let his teammates know that he's "dying inside." Covington gets up from her seat and does her pregame ritual -- giving each player a little hug while muttering goading digs into their ears, such as "Get your hand off the damn buzzer" or "I love everyone on the team except you." And then the round begins.

Novice-level certamen players can anticipate questions by memorizing frequently cited facts (the dates for the founding of Rome, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, etc.) or trying to predict the word that the moderator is about to say. But at the upper levels, it's all about reaction time. Cutting the moderator off mid-question is known as "hyperbuzzing," and it can be either a technique or a liability, depending on your timing. A quarter-second too soon and you won't have heard enough -- and thus will have forfeited your team's chance to answer the question. A quarter-second too late and another team will have buzzed in.

In this round, Fredericksen starts off eagerly, buzzes too early and loses the first question. But he and Leahy capture enough tossup questions for Virginia to win the round easily.

Their score puts them in fifth place out of 21 teams -- a good start. (For the first three rounds of certamen, it doesn't matter if a team wins or loses -- teams are ranked by cumulative points, and to make it to the semifinals, a team needs only to finish in the top nine.) Virginia's intermediate team has done even better, finishing first. But Virginia's novice players have a harder time. At the end of the night, they're in eighth place.

The next day is a long one. Not only does it include two rounds of certamen -- one in the morning, one at night -- but it's packed with other activities in which the certameners also want to participate: a Latin sight-reading contest, a JCL committee meeting that chapter president Velchik must attend (not to mention the daily spirit contest that he helps run), and an academic testing session for all five players. The session offers tests in Greek derivatives; ancient geography; mythology and mottoes; and quotations and abbreviations. Leahy takes all four -- and still manages to arrive with her best friend at the costume competition dressed as Peleus and Thetis, the father and mother of Achilles. They win first place.

Despite this exhausting schedule, all the Virginia teams are in good spirits after the evening's certamen, which is the third and final preliminary round. Both the upper-level and intermediate teams have finished in first place, and the novice team has pulled itself up to third. All three have made it to the semifinals. There's a chance, albeit a small one, they could sweep nationals. As each round ends, Virginia fans erupt into cheers, then swarm around the players to congratulate them. For a brief moment, being a stellar Latin student can make you the most popular person in the room.

LATIN HASN'T ALWAYS HAD IT THIS GOOD. In 1905, 56 percent of American public high school students studied Latin, but, as the century progressed and fewer colleges required Latin as a prerequisite, that percentage quickly declined. By 1948, only 7.9 percent of public high school students were studying Latin. When the political and social unrest of the 1960s and '70s encouraged students to question and reject traditional curricula, the number dropped further. From 1962 to 1976, Latin public high school enrollment plummeted from 7.1 percent of students to 1.1 percent. Classicists began to realize something: If they didn't take action, Latin was at serious risk of dying out.

It was the beginning of what Ken Kitchell, former president of the American Classical League, refers to as "the great counteroffensive." Classicists began focusing on making Latin appealing to a wider range of students, especially those in elementary schools, on the theory that if you hook them young, you'll have them for life. Latin teachers started placing more emphasis on Roman history and culture in an attempt to get kids interested in the classics in middle school. To do so, they used a series of new textbooks designed to introduce Latin not just with grammatical exercises but with stories, plotlines and characters that students could relate to.

The result? As Kitchell puts it, "It's not your mom's and dad's Latin anymore." Publishers offer books and tapes of conversational Latin, trading cards featuring mythological characters, and Latin translations of books ranging from Dr. Seuss to Harry Potter. The number of American public high school students studying Latin hasn't skyrocketed, but it has remained steady, and now, nearly three decades after the counter-offensive began, classicists are facing a different problem: a shortage of Latin teachers. But all this doesn't answer the obvious question: Who cares? Why should people spend time studying and promoting a language and a culture that peaked almost two millennia ago?