Saratoga team places third in Science Bowl competition

At the Regional Science Bowl Competition at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) on Feb. 11, the science bowl team of seniors Arnav Dugar, Chris Jones, Hansen Qian, Alissa Zhang and Myron Zhang placed third among 24 teams from 20 other high schools from the Silicon Valley.

These A Team members, along with B team members sophomores Nolan Chen and Robert Eng, juniors Amanda Chow and Jackie Gu and senior David Eng, started preparing for the competition last October under the guidance of chemistry teacher Kathy Nakamatsu. They met about twice a month.

Nakamatsu gave the students tips but mostly encouraged the teams to teach one another.
“I was more of an observer, and if I noticed they were doing something and the student-coach didn’t point it out, I would point it out,” Nakamatsu said.

During their sessions, the two teams competed against one another in practice rounds answering both multiple-choice and short-answer questions related to chemistry, physics, Earth and space science, biology and energy. This practice helped them develop not only knowledge, but also strategies on how to divide the work and be most efficient.

According to Qian, the students also prepared presentations on topics none of the other members knew anything about in order to increase their breadth of knowledge.

The A Team won all five rounds of their round robin division, placing them in the upper bracket where they then placed third in the final double eliminations round.

Nakamatsu was pleased with the performance of the students, crediting the success of the A Team mainly to their preparation and diverse knowledge.

“They prepared very well,” Nakamatsu said. “It was a good mix of strengths. People brought different things to the table, which was good.”

According to the A Team, the pairing of opponents also helped them succeed.

“We were very fortunate not to have been placed into a morning round robin comprising of the powerhouse teams, since that might have psychologically intimidated us and affected how we approached our competition,” Qian said. “Instead we went into our rounds comfortable and optimistic.”

Team B, on the other hand, felt that some of the brackets were unfair because they competed against some of the best schools. Nonetheless, both teams realized the importance of collaboration.

“The competition took a tremendous amount of collaboration,” Dugar said. “Each of us had our own strengths, and we were all dependent on each other for success.”