Clark High School freshman wins seven medals in History Olympiad competition

Eshaan Vakil put Las Vegas on the map.

Vakil, 15, of Summerlin came away with seven medals, including gold, at the International History Olympiad held July 17-24 at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu.

The competition saw the top 85 history students from 38 countries competing. Vakil was the first student from Nevada ever to qualify. He recently graduated from Hyde Park Middle School, 900 Hinson St., and is now a freshman at Clark High School, 4291 Pennwood Ave.

Competitions at the Olympiad include history quiz tournaments, exams, simulations of historical events and a civilization computer game tournament. Vakil said the questions were hard, as was the pressure to earn daily medals.

“I was really worried that I didn’t win any medals until the last two days, so I was freaking out,” he said. “But then I won three, so I settled down after that.”

For the competition, the buzzer system meant he had to not only study, but sharpen his reflexes. Preliminary rounds whittled the field of nearly 90 students down to eight. From there, the top three made it to the finals.

The National History Bee in Chicago qualified him for the international competition in Honolulu.

He took: Gold in Art History; Silver for Recent History; Silver in History of the Cold War; Silver for the International History Bee Championship; Silver in Visual History; Bronze in Naval History; and Bronze for International History Team Championship. The awards ceremony was held on the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor.

“It was great to see our (state) flag, see him stand on the podium for gold and hear our song being played,” said his mother Manu. “A lot of people had never heard (Nevada’s anthem) before. We felt really proud.”

The win comes as no surprise to Manu and Eshaan’s dad Joyen. He is their only child and began reading simple books such as “Goodnight Moon” at 2 1/2 years old.

“We always knew there was something (special) about him,” Manu said. “They assigned him a special teacher.”

He was tested in the third grade at Hoggard Elementary School and placed in advanced classes. He was tested again at Hyde Park in sixth grade.

He credits four of his Hyde Park teachers — Robin Manning, Nathan Webster, Janet Weinstein and Lauren Beattie — with helping him learn the material he needed to know.

Weinstein taught him world geography in eighth grade.

“His knowledge of the world is tremendous,” she said. “Not only does Eshaan have a vast knowledge of the world, he has a deep understanding of how countries interact with each other. … During the debates, he was able to make analogies of a situation with one country to a similar situation of another country. His comprehension of world politics and economics was stellar.”

He loves every aspect of history, he said, and offered three pieces of trivia: Part of the wall at the Tower of London is older than the United States; Benjamin Franklin was known for his sense of humor. When he signed the Declaration of Independence, he said, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately”; and when Henry V signed the Treaty of Troyes, it made him or his heir the king of France upon the death of King Charles VI.

“When most people think of England and France back then, they think of them as always fighting, but because of the treaty, they had the same king,” Vakil said.

This is not his only involvement with quiz bowl-type competitions. Last year, he took fourth at the National Academic Quiz Tournament, which covers a myriad of topics. He was part of the Nevada team, which received snickers and snide comments.

“Nevada always comes in last in studies of educational performance,” he said, “so I thought, ‘We can’t wait for grown-ups to change it. The children have to fix our education system.’ ”

It prompted him to get other students involved in the challenges and fun of learning.

This summer, he founded the Alliance for Academic Quiz Bowl (AAQB), with the intent to get middle school students on par with students from other states. AAQB will qualify the winner to move on to the next national competition in Atlanta. Its first tournament is Nov. 5. Visit aaquizbowl.org.

“Hopefully, we’ll get children interested in learning and quiz bowls,” he said. “It’s very fun.”

Vakil is eyeing a career possibly as a chemist, a physicist, a historian or a diplomat.

His win this summer qualifies him for the next international history bowl, to be held in Berlin in 2018.

“What intrigues me about history is that it’s like one grand story,” he said. “It’s the story of the world and all the people who are in it.”

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.