A triumph for the Tigers: Stillman College wins Honda Campus All-Star Challenge

Four students from Stillman College made a little bit of history and some money for their school last week.

For the first time, a team from Stillman won the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge, the country's premier academic competition for historically Black colleges and universities. Winning the challenge, a tournament-style contest that involves answering questions on an array of topics, includes a a $75,000 institutional grant from Honda to Stillman.

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"It's been really nice to use this win as a way to say 'Thank you' to the people who helped us as well. So giving this back to the school ... it's been tremendous, wonderful," said Carla A. Louca, a senior majoring in religion from Tuscaloosa, who served as the team captain.

Stillman has participated in all 34 years that the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge has been held, but never before has the Tuscaloosa school come away with the top prize.

The national tournament was hosted on the American Honda corporate campus in Torrance, California. More than 200 HBCU students, along with their coaches, participated in this year's tournament.

Stillman's winning team was coached by Thomas Steven Jennings, an associate professor of history, In addition to Louca, the team included Susannah Britain LeMay, a junior majoring in journalism from Fredericksburg, Virginia; Jaela Williams, a junior majoring in criminal justice from Huntsville; and Zharia Nubia Lankford, a senior majoring in journalism from Douglasville, Georgia.

Williams said she was excited to bring home the championship title and was happy to be able to represent her school in a positive way.

"I'm really happy to have done this for my school. We brought so much money to our school, so much publicity to our school. So I'm really glad to be a part of that and to kind of set the standard for our next year's team," Williams said.

In a best two-out-of-three games during the challenge's championship match, Stillman defeated the Tuskegee University team by providing the correct answers to questions in categories that included history, science, literature, religion, the arts and pop culture.

Stillman topped teams from 64 HBCUs and qualified for the national championship tournament after winning a series of regional competitions throughout the academic year.

As a bonus for this year’s tournament, Honda awarded an additional $1,000 in institutional grants to schools that earned perfect scores in the last round, dubbed the Ultimate Challenge. During this rapid-fire round, teams had 60 seconds to answer 10 questions. Stillman's team had two perfect Ultimate Challenge rounds.

Jennings, who is in his 15th year coaching the team for the challenge, said the road to last week's victory has been a long one. The team began training for the competition at the beginning of school year and spent several hours reviewing study guides and other material.

Jennings attributed last week's win to a lot of training and recruiting a great group of scholars who are each knowledgeable in different topics.

Jennings said the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge program is more than just a competition, it's also an opportunity to bring together students from HBCUs across the country and celebrate each other.

"While Stillman comes out with the trophy in the end, everybody who is in the program is a winner, for sure," Jennings said.

The theme of this year's challenge was "Driving the Legacy," which Honda said was meant to celebrate the history of HCBUs and inspire students. Since the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge began in 1989, the program has awarded $11 million in institutional grants to participating HBCUs.

Reach Jasmine Hollie at JHollie@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Stillman College makes history at Honda Campus All-Star Challenge