Who is Mattea Roach? The latest Jeopardy! champion from Nova Scotia

This Nova Scotia woman is the latest Jeopardy! champion.

Who is Mattea Roach?

The 23-year-old Halifax woman won Tuesday night’s round of Jeopardy! and walked away with $32,001.

“I had the best time,” said Roach during a phone interview with CTV Atlantic on Wednesday.

“I could have not won a thing and still have had the best time.”

Roach, who graduated from the University of Toronto in 2020, says the money will help her pay off her student loans.

“My student loan is paid off!” she exclaimed on TV after learning she was the new champion.

“I’m hoping to go back to school, so there will be more … now I start from zero!”

Roach, a tutor, faced off against Camron Conners, a high school social studies teacher from California, and Kathleen Snyder, a government contractor from Virginia.

The final category was “classic games” with the following clue:

"Reuben Klamer, who passed away in 2021 at age 99, developed this game relatable to 'literally everyone on earth.'"

Snyder and Roach both answered correctly with “What is Life?” but Roach was already in the lead with $18,000, and with a bet of 14,001, she kept her first-place spot and left the stage a champion.

“I wanted to bet strategically to win,” Roach told Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik. “I was like, maybe I’ll know it, and I got lucky.”

“‘You can be a winner at the Game of Life,’ is what it says on the box, so there you go!” responded Bialik. “Congratulations!”

‘REALLY INTENSE EXPERIENCE’

While her first thought when she realized she had won was that she could pay off her student loans, her second was the realization that she would have to tape another episode soon after.

“Oh wow, I have to do this again,” she said. “It’s a really intense experience, taping an episode of Jeopardy! I was just completely in the zone.”

Roach couldn’t say whether she went on to win any additional rounds, of course, but did say she would likely invest any potential winnings in the future.

“I’m generally a pretty practical person. I was never going to be somebody that would go on a game show and buy a very fancy car,” she said.  “My inclination is more to try and invest it and save it for the future.

“I realize that’s not a very fun answer.”

Roach was quick to answer another question during Tuesday night’s episode, thanks to her Nova Scotia roots:

“Nova Scotia Duck Tolling is one breed of sporting dog for whom ‘Fetch’ should be instinctual,” read the clue.

“What is a retriever?” answered Roach, who was first to buzz in. “I can’t get that wrong, that’s my home province!”

As for Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik, Roach said she was “very nice” and a “calming presence before the show.”

‘IT’S BEEN OVERWHELMING’

Roach first applied to be on the long-running game show in 2020. This January, she was invited to Los Angeles to tape an episode.

“It was definitely something I had always thought would be interesting to do,” she said.

“When Alex Trebek passed away, I was thinking about the show a lot. I was like, ‘I should take this test and see what happens.’ I did it on a whim, but it was something that I always wanted to do.”

While Roach is from Halifax, she also has close ties to Cape Breton. Her mom is from Ingonish, N.S., and her father is from New Waterford, N.S., and many of her relatives still live on the island.

They showed their support ahead of her Jeopardy! debut in what Roach described as “extreme Cape Breton behavior,” by adding “Good luck Mattea” to the sign on their grocery store in Marion Bridge, N.S.

A group of her relatives also gathered for a watch party Tuesday night at a Sydney, N,.S., sports bar owned by a family friend. Roach said she heard they planned to head back to the Steel City Sports Bar to watch Wednesday night’s episode.

“It’s been overwhelming, to be totally honest,” she said of the support she has received both online and from her home province of Nova Scotia.

“I think it’s so special. One of the things I love most about Nova Scotia is how much we support our own people. If a Nova Scotian accomplishes anything, everyone knows about it. I think that energy is so nice.”

Roach will return to the Jeopardy! stage Wednesday evening to face off against Vernon Ng, an associate professor of English from Washington, and Lana Altman, a digital programming manager from Connecticut.