Lots of people don't know what platyhelminthes are, but members of the Fort Mill High School Academic Team know.

Platyhelminthes are flatworms, and there are 15,000 species of them. Dubbed the "A Team," team members also know many little-known facts, such as "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop" was written by Irish poet/playwright William Butler Yeats and that Ganesha is the Hindu elephant-headed God of Wisdom.

That's because, from October to May, they studied and were quizzed on a huge notebook of facts ranging from Ancient Greece to modern times and things local, national and even constellational.

It was all for the National Academic Quiz Tournament held May 23 to 25 in Chicago. They have made it to the national tournament six of the past eight years.

This year the team comprised completely of seniors vied with 176 teams from 35 states and defeated Utah's Diego High, Iowa's West Bend High, Louisiana's Baton Rouge High and Virginia's Orange County High before exiting the double-elimination tournament. Virginia's Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Math, ranked first among "U.S. News & World Report's" top 100 high schools nationally, claimed its fourth national championship in the past six years.

For nearly six months the A Team -- Michelle Cote, Ryan Gustafson, Caleb Klipowicz, Daniel Koverman, Kevin Loeper and Noah Nguyen -- met each weekend to be quizzed on notebook items outside the expected high school academic curriculum. That included philosophy, church history, paintings and composers. Every other weekend they traveled to a match somewhere in the Southeast to qualify for national competition.

The matches are similar to the popular television quiz show "Jeopardy!" in which the first contestant to hit the buzzer gets to answer the question.

Team members were screened and selected by program adviser Jason Ford, the school's Advanced Placement English teacher.

The October tryouts included both a written exam and oral skills, including quick-thinking and reflex action on the buzzer. The contestants have to master four different types of buzzers, Ford said. Ford also selects team members based on their areas of expertise.

"You just have to wrack your brains a lot," said team member Ryan Gustafson, whose specialty is math and science. "It's very high-energy. I click when I'm sure I have the answer."

That's because, if the first person to click doesn't know the answer, their team loses points. Koverman waits, for example, to be sure the entire title of a book has been read before buzzing in.

"I was one of the slow ones on the buzzer," said Koverman, whose specialty also is math and science. "Math questions tend to be different because you had to solve it while they are reading it, and sometimes I could ring in before they got through the whole question."

Cote, the only girl on the team, said everyone picked up buzzer speed during the six months of meets.

Team members agreed the national match was more difficult than regional competitions.

"There was a lot of random, quirky sci-fi stuff that I didn't have a clue about," said Gustafson.

Klipowicz describes himself as "the miscellaneous person." "Anything from Greek gods to baseball players and religious text," he said of his expertise. "I think the questions at national are more obscure."

They enjoyed, naturally, the food, but also the architecture in Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago was a major highlight because they studied real paintings previously known only as small photos in textbooks. One favorite was Georges Seurat's painting, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." Seurat is a late 19th century French painter credited with founding neoimpressionism. The painting is a renowned example of pointillism, an entire work of art comprised of dots of paint.

"I studied Seurat in my French class," Cote said. "I walked into the modern art part of the museum, and there it was. I thought it was probably in France somewhere."

Seurat took two years creating the painting.

"It was amazing," Gustafson said. "This painting was huge. At least 10 feet wide and six feet high. I was surprised anyone would actually spend time on that."

Klipowicz liked Grant Wood's early 20th century "American Gothic," the famous, country painting of an expressionless man and woman standing on each side of a pitchfork. "Just to look at it," he said. "It was impressive."

ustafson will attend the University of South Carolina this fall to study economics and international business. Koverman heads to Duke University to study computer science and electrical engineering. Cote will attend Furman University and study English. Klipowicz will major in math at Clemson University.

Klipowicz and Cote both plan to become high school teachers. They think the six months of study was all worth it.

"I had a great time, and just learning so much is invaluable," said Klipowicz. "We have a lot of shared memories," Koverman said.