Science Bowl team finishes tryouts, begins implementing new practice strategies

As sophomore Enoch Luk buzzed in and gave his answer for a chemistry question about Boyle’s Law during the buzzer round of Science Bowl tryouts on Oct. 12, he was ecstatic to hear that his answer was correct, giving him the fourth and final point he needed to make the team.

This year is Luk’s first year on the team, and he looks forward to improving his science knowledge and buzzing speed.

Along with Luk, students to make the top 10 cut for the team include senior officers Ethan Ko, Joseph Li and Michael Zhang; senior Nathan Luk; juniors Brandon Wang and Jeffrey Xu and sophomores Rohan Kumar, Andrew Li and Oliver Ye.

The officers held tryouts in the room of their adviser chemistry teacher Kathy Nakamatsu after school on Oct. 10 and 12. On the first day, students took a 20-minute written test covering topics from biology to astronomy, and those who scored well were invited to the buzzer round two days later, in which the officers tested the students’ speed in answering practice Science Bowl questions.

Ko said that the officers considered the future of their team when they selected members this year. In addition to the top 10 individuals, they invited underclassmen who showed potential through their written tryouts but did not pass the buzzer round.

Two teams of five students will attend Science Bowl’s main competition held at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Laboratory in the spring. Ideally, students on each team specialize in different topics of science for maximum possible coverage. These two teams are similar in skill level, and they generally do not compete against each other unless they both make it to the finals.

The students are currently still practicing as one group, but Ko plans on breaking into the two competition teams earlier than in previous years. With this change, Ko said that each student will have more time to focus on developing areas of specialization.

Additionally, in past years, the group typically met once a week, but the officers this year aim to organize practices twice a week. Nakamatsu said that these more frequent practices have already benefited the group.

“It’s going to help build team camaraderie,” she said. “I already see that the team seems more cohesive.”

Last year’s team did not perform as well as they had hoped during their competition last spring, and because of this, Nakamatsu is thankful that several underclassmen showed interest in joining this year.

“I know a lot of people got discouraged after the competition last year,” she said. “I wasn’t even sure if Science Bowl was going to happen again, so I’m excited that people still want to do it.”

As one of the new underclassmen on the team, Luk said that his main focus for this year will be to improve his skills in earth and space science. He noticed that the team favored biology, physics and chemistry questions during practices, so he chose an area in which he felt the team was lacking.

Ko hopes that the changes to Science Bowl this year will bring a long-lasting positive impact.

“It’ll probably be more fun because there's going to be a clear goal for each person on what they should achieve,” Ko said. “Hopefully, this will also translate to improvement in performance and more interest in the future.”