This … is … a story about Skyler Hornback, a 2017 Electric Cooperative Youth Tour delegate from Kentucky who appeared not once, but twice, on “Jeopardy!”

Now 24, Hornback, a chemical engineering Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, appeared this season on the show’s Invitational Tournament, which brought back 27 former champions from the show’s nearly six-decade run. Twelve years earlier, he competed on “Jeopardy!” Kids Week as a student at LaRue County Middle School near his home in Sonora, Kentucky, where his parents still live.

And while Hornback’s $5,000 prize winnings the second time around came up short compared to his Kids Week haul of $66,600, he has no regrets about going back on the game show.

“It was a complete surprise when I got the email [from “Jeopardy!” producers] asking me back out to LA for the tournament,” Hornback said. “I was honored they had selected me, out of hundreds of former champions, to be one of the 27 for this season.”

Hornback represented Nolin RECC during the 2017 Youth Tour, one of five students from the Elizabethtown, Kentucky, co-op that year. While Hornback’s academic talents enabled him to travel outside rural Kentucky a number of times, the friendships and experiences forged during Youth Tour made the weeklong trip his favorite, “hands down.”

Meeting his members of Congress was memorable, but “it was so neat to be in an environment with people who know what it’s like to be from a town of 500 people,” Hornback said, adding that he still keeps up with his Youth Tour friends. “I have been to several national conferences where it seemed everyone was from the largest city or suburb in their state,” he said.

Hornback’s hometown roots were a distinct advantage during Kids Week. Heading into the Final Jeopardy! round, Hornback was in the lead with $36,600, having correctly answered two Daily Doubles. And so he couldn’t believe his luck when the Final Jeopardy! category was revealed: “Civil War.”

“Everybody thinks Illinois, but he was a Kentuckian before he went to Illinois,” he said. “Everything in my town has a Lincoln theme. It’s Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln. I went to Abraham Lincoln Elementary School. There’s a Lincoln Lodge. There’s a radio station, Abe 93.7.”

“The safest and sanest thing to do was bet zero and walk away with $36,600. The other two competitors wouldn’t have been able to catch up. But I also knew there wasn’t any coming back and playing again, even if I did win, due to the unique format of Kids Week. It was ‘go big or go home!’”

Hornback bet $30,000 and the answer was: “Abraham Lincoln called this document, which took effect in 1863, ‘a fit and necessary war measure.’”

“I knew immediately it was the Emancipation Proclamation,” he said. That day, the confident yet genial middle schooler walked away with $66,600, one of the top five one-day records for “Jeopardy!” winnings, then-host Alex Trebek informed the studio audience.

“I would never pretend to think that I know everything about the Civil War, but given my background, it’s all about the odds, right? And kind of having the confidence in yourself, too,” Hornback said.

And as many Youth Tour alums, including Hornback, will attest, the one-week trip to the nation’s capital is another confidence booster. “I’m a firm believer that no one finds success in life completely on their own,” he said. “A large network of friends and colleagues is essential.”