Talk about your tough beats! Jaime Alayon must have felt like the football coach whose team leads the entire game and then gets beat on the last play of the game on a Hail Mary touchdown pass.

    Such was the case last Thursday night (Feb. 2) when the Virginia Gardens resident and 2010 Miami Springs High School graduate made his debut on the “Jeopardy College Championships.” After leading the entire show, Alayon lost in Final Jeopardy and had to settle for a second-place finish in the quarterfinal round. The hopeful news is that his final total of $12,799 is a good one and he could still wind up advancing to the semifinal round, scheduled to air later this week, as a wild-card entry.

    “I thought of that Broncos-Dolphins game,” Alayon said when asked how he felt after the show. “The Dolphins led the entire game and were up by 15 points with something like four minutes left and then blew the game.”

    Alayon led off the show by “running the table” in the category Band Name Adjectives to take a $3,000 lead and never looked back. Taking on University of Michigan junior Connie Shi and Eastern Illinois University junior Anne Rozak, the sophomore from George Washington University looked calm and cool the entire show and led the entire way, taking a $6,400 lead into Final Jeopardy.

    With a first place-finish guaranteeing him a spot in this week’s semifinals, Alayon was at $18,800, Shi at $12,400 and Rozak at $7,200 as they headed into Final Jeopardy. The category was 19th Century Authors. The answer was “One of this author’s greatest successes came after remarking, ‘I want to write about a fellow who was two fellows.’ ”

    Rozak and Shi both nailed it, with the correct answer being Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote the novel “Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.” Shi wagered $6,600, bringing her total to $19,000, and Rozak wagered $4,300 to move up to $11,500. The look on Alayon’s face said it all when host Alex Trebek walked over and revealed his question: Who is Franz Kapka? Alayon risked $6,001, dropping him back to second.

    The extra dollar on top of Alayon’s $6,000 wager was to make sure that if Shi had risked her entire amount and been right, her $24,800 total would have been a dollar short of Alayon’s $24,801 had he been right.

    “I knew I was in trouble when I saw it come up,” Alayon said of the Final Jeopardy question. “If you don’t know something right away, you’re probably not going to get it. It was disappointing but I was still pleased with my overall performance.”

    So how is he still alive? The five quarterfinal shows net five winners but nine students will make the three semifinal shows, scheduled to air this Wednesday through Friday, Feb. 8-10. Of the 10 non-winners, the top four money totals from that group will make it in as wild cards.

    Following the fourth of five quarterfinal shows this past Monday night (Feb. 6), Alayon’s total was the third-highest, meaning the only way he could get bumped is if the second- and third-place finishers from the final quarterfinal show on Tuesday (Feb. 7) both finished with a higher total. His semifinal show, should he make it, would air this Thursday, Feb. 9. (For an update on Alayon’s fate, visit www.miamiherald.com/river-cities on Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 8.)

    Already guaranteed a minimum of $5,000 for his quarterfinal appearance, Alayon would move that number up to $10,000 if he makes the semis. The two-part final will air next Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 13-14, with $100,000, $50,000 and $25,000 guaranteed to the first-, second- and third-place finishers, respectively.