'On cloud nine': Green Bay elementary school teacher comes in third with $3,100 on 'Jeopardy!'
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Christina Clark of De Pere racked up $3,100 on Wednesday's episode of "Jeopardy!" but it wasn’t enough to knock out defending champion Mattea Roach, who won her 17th straight victory in a close race Wednesday.
The Green Bay elementary school music teacher placed third on the TV quiz show.
Clark, 39, buzzed in for several questions around the board.
She aced clues about "Moby Dick," "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Last of the Mohicans" in the A Novel Look at the Novel category and correctly guessed the missing words in several of the proverbs in the Finish the Old Proverb category.
She also answered questions about the Cleveland Cavaliers, Beatitudes and Mount El'brus.
Every time she was able to buzz in, her answer was right.
"My two goals were to not totally embarrass myself and be around for Final Jeopardy!," Clark told the Press-Gazette Wednesday night. "I achieved both of those."
During a segment chatting with host Ken Jennings, Clark told him about the 146 animals that she has fostered. It started with taking in one kitten for a couple weeks from the humane society. Since then, she’s taken in more kittens, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, hamsters and rats over six years. She kept five of them.
It's not everyday that someone goes up against a champion like Roach.
When Clark heard she would be competing against Roach, Clark said she got nervous.
"It was kind of terrifying," she said.
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But Clark and Ben Hsia, Wednesday's runner-up, didn't make it easy for her.
It was a close race, with Hsia topping Roach during the opening round. After filming, Roach told them it was one of her more challenging episodes.
Going into Final Jeopardy!, Clark had "a very good third-place score" of $8,400, Jennings said.
But the topic for Final Jeopardy! was poets, which is not Clark's best subject.
"As soon as the category came up, I was like, 'Oh no,'" Clark said.
The clue was: "In 1939, he was buried near his last residence in France, but his body arrived in Galway en route to final burial on Sept. 17, 1948."
Clark guessed John Keats but the poet was William Butler Yeats. She wagered $5,300 and ended up with $3,100.
Hsia, from Fremont, California, correctly answered Yeats and doubled his $13,600 to match Roach's $27,200. But Roach was able to win her 17th time by waging $1 and won in first place with $27,201.
Roach's 17-day total stands at $396,182.
All of Clark's coworkers and students cheered her on Wednesday night, every time she got a question right at watch parties for her.
Clark is "still on cloud nine" after accomplishing something that she has dreamed of since she was a kid. She has been taking the test to get on the show for 20 years.
"I did something that only a few hundred people get to do every year," she said.
Contact Benita Mathew at bmathew@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @benita_mathew.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay elementary school teacher finishes third on 'Jeopardy!'
