Science Bowl finishes with high expectations for next year

The school’s Science Bowl A and B teams competed in the Regional Science Bowl competition on Feb. 6., during which team B placed fourth overall.

Though neither of the school's Science Bowl teams will advance beyond the regional level this year, members believe the reason has little to do with lack of knowledge.

Instead, they struggled with buzzing in too early or too late on questions, according to co-captain Jacky Lee. Lee said that the members  tended to buzz too late and let the other team get the answer first, or buzz too early to know what the question is asking.

During the competition, teams are split into four groups, which each compete in a Round Robin-style round. The top two in each group advance to double eliminations.

The A team placed third, so it did not advance, but the B team placed second and went on to another Round Robin. Team A lost to Harker and Albany, while Team B lost to Lynbrook. Surprisingly, Team B won against Homestead’s team, which won the competition two years ago.

This year’s A team included seniors Alex Li, Brendan Ney, Jacky Lee and Allen Shen, while this year’s B team included  senior Nate Ney, juniors Austin Cai and Anthony Ding and freshman Joey Li and Michael Zhang.

Co-captain Lee attributed the team’s early elimination to an overly aggressive approach to buzzing during the matches against Albany and Harker, which were “pretty close.” Though Lee was disappointed by the A team’s losses, he said he was pleasantly surprised by the B team’s performance.

“I think this year's A team was the best we have ever had,” Lee said. “But due to unfortunate groupings, [we did not perform as well as expected]. [Even so,] B team had the harder grouping and they still passed, so we are looking forward to next year's results.”

Though this year’s competition is already over, the team is still holding practices on Friday afternoons  in AP Chemistry teacher Kathy Nakamatsu’s room. All are welcome to these practices, regardless of experience.

“[In Science Bowl], you get to meet, bond and have fun with other people,” Lee said. “It [combines] all sciences, and it’s different from other science competitions, which are usually written tests. Science Bowl is buzzer-styled, so it’s more fast-paced.”