A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
The Medich family has pledged $1 million toward a new chalet at Cloquet's Pine Valley Recreation Area.
Family friends and former teachers breathed a sigh of relief after Carlton grad Sam Kavanaugh won his Jeopardy Invitational Tournament quarterfinal ... by a dollar. The Streetcar Kitchen & Pub, owned by Sam's aunt and uncle, held a Jeopardy watch party in the back room on Thursday, March 28.
From left, Doug Finke and Diane Felde-Finke congratulate Ed Kavanaugh on Sam's Jeopardy win last week. They used to play trivia with Sam and his brother, James, while they worked in the strawberry fields.
Esko's Niki Munthe throws both arms in the air and cheers when she realizes Sam Kavanaugh won this round.
Members of the Kavanaugh village gathered at the Streetcar last week to watch Carlton's own Jeopardy champion, Sam Kavanaugh, in another tournament. The hometown hero didn't disappoint, keeping fans guessing to the very end of the high-stakes trivia show.
It wasn't that Sam answered the final question correctly: no one did. Rather, he wagered less than Monica Thieu did, who was beating him by $3,800. The end result saw her score drop to $7,599 while Kavanaugh's dropped to $7,600. A dollar's difference.
The room erupted into applause and cheers as the 2009 Carlton grad defeated the two other former champions. Esko's Niki Munthe threw both arms up in the air, cheering with relief. Mike Duffy gave a quiet thumbs up. Sam's high school English teacher, Steve Therrien, raised a glass with the rest of the table, which included Sue Spencer, the charge nurse at the hospital where Sam was born.
"It takes a village. These people, they've all had a part in it," said Ed Kavanaugh, Sam's dad, after it was all over.
Ed pointed to others who contributed to Sam's development. Doug Fink and Diane Felde Finke, who employed Sam and his older brother James in the strawberry fields. "They'd do these trivia things all the time in the fields," he said.
Doug and Diane stopped to chat with Ed on their way out. Doug recalled the complaints
back then.
"'It ain't fair, Sam's on their team,'" he mimicked. "And I'm muttering under my breath, 'OK, get Sam and the three idiots on one team.' It's still not fair. Why? Because Sam's on their team."
The two Kavanaugh boys approached their trivia very differently, Doug said.
"James, ask him a question and he'd go: 'No. It's 7 point 436982. Probably about the third page in, right-hand column, third sentence down,' and he'd be frickin' right. Sam, he'd be looking at the multiple choice and thinking it 'can't be this, can't be that, gotta be one of these two, OK, I'll go with this one.'"
Doug says both boys set goals and got there.
"James wanted to be a doctor at Mayo. Well, he made it. And Sam wanted to be on Jeopardy and he made it," Doug said with a chuckle, alleging that Ed must have just been a carrier of knowledge, not "afflicted" with it.
Ed credits his late wife, Jane, who passed away before Sam made his Jeopardy dream come true. Both Ed and Jane were teachers, and travelers.
"My wife was a games lady," Ed said.
Next round
Of course, Sam Kavanaugh deserves the lion's share of the credit for being among the elite Jeopardy champions.
After squeaking by for the win last week, Sam advanced to the semifinal round of the first-ever Jeopardy Invitational Tournament. His semifinal round was Wednesday, and that's where this run ended.
Andrew He, a stay-at-home dad, won decisively, getting to $32,000 in the Double Jeopardy round compared to $13,200 for Larissa Kelly and $9,200 for Sam.
"There's not enough cash on the board to equal Andrew," said host Ken Jennings. Still, they finished the game.
"I obviously wanted to win, but going up against those two is a good way to go out," Sam said. "Larissa is one of my heroes. I remember watching her in 2009 and thinking it was cool, imagining being up there. Andrew and I met through Jeopardy. I was training [for the Tournament of Champions] and he hadn't been on the show yet. We did some Zoom games together and helped each other."
Future plans
The entire Invitational Tournament was actually taped in three days, Feb. 26-28. Competitors had about three weeks advance notice.
If he gets another invite after finishing in the top third, Sam would like a few months heads-up instead of weeks. Because he's taking time off. For a month he hasn't done flashcards or played a digital game, with his fiancee, Jess, acting as show host.
"It's nice to read a book I just want to read, or a show I just want to watch, or even just let conversations unfold," he said. "The way I approach the game, it permeates my whole life."
Playing at the highest level can be very isolating, he said, between studying, keeping show results secret, and even competing against two other people on the show.
So he wore two boutonnieres during the invitational: the first made by his nieces, the second by his fiancee. "I wanted to remind myself there are a lot of people in my corner," he said.
Jess made the semifinal boutonniere from cedar grown on his dad's farm outside of Carlton.
"It's a reminder of the natural world we come from," he said. "It grows and you grow with it."
Sam said he wouldn't turn down another invitational - Jeopardy is planning to do them annually - but he has other things to do.
He and Jess have plans to marry in the fall. He's been working as a substitute teacher in Minneapolis since the pandemic, but that might change.
"I enjoy it, but I've been in a holding pattern so I could do Jeopardy things," he said. "I'm going to enjoy putting my mind and extra time toward some other things."
