NM regional science bowl winners decided

After months of studying, quizzing and memorizing facts and formulas, winners have emerged from this year’s DOE Regional Science Bowl competitions in New Mexico.

For the third time in four years, a team from Los Alamos High School was the victor in the high school competition on March 7.

Last year’s winner, La Cueva High School, placed second this year. The team from Albuquerque Academy finished out the top three.

Middle school winners

In the middle school competition, held Feb. 7, Los Alamos also took home the trophy, narrowly defeating Desert Ridge Middle School. A second Los Alamos Middle School team came in third.

Both first-place teams will now head to the DOE National Science Bowl on April 30, in Washington, D.C., to face off against top teams from across the country.

It’s about more than winning

While holding the trophy and earning the opportunity to show their skills on the national stage is no doubt a highlight of Science Bowl, it’s about more than winning.

“What I love about this competition is that students really think critically,” said Deb Menke, Sandia’s STEM education outreach program manager. “They collaborate, they have teamwork and they learn about real-world problems, preparing them to be our future scientists.”

Deb helps bring the science bowl to life each year and recruits nearly two dozen Sandia volunteers who serve as judges, timekeepers, scorekeepers and organizers — all of whom get a front-row seat to the excitement and challenge it brings to students.

“It takes a lot of caffeine,” La Cueva Team 2 member Alicia Peng said. “If someone pulled me off the street and asked me one of the questions we have to answer, I would look at them funny.”

Peng and her teammates said preparing for Science Bowl takes hundreds of hours of learning formulas, terminology, roots, prefixes, chemical compounds, scientific elements and more.

“On top of that, you have to be confident in your answers,” La Cueva teammate Inler Lu said.

This year, Lu and Peng’s team did not place in the top three, but their classmates, who make up La Cueva Team 1 did, including senior Hiro Jau.

“For me I don’t necessarily learn just for science bowl,” Jau said. “I try to learn everything I can about things I find interesting and a lot of times that transfers over.”

Jau is both a participant and mentor to students from Desert Ridge Middle School, the team that placed second in the competition this year.

“It was really hard for me in middle school because I didn’t have the exposure to all these areas of science,” Jau said. “I want to help these middle schoolers be better prepared when they transition to the high school competition.”

He gets help from teammate Aiden Kim, a junior at La Cueva High School, who aspires to become an engineer.

“We spent time with these kids every week before school. We practice with them, even run practice sets with them.” Kim said. “I think this helps you get interested in certain things and see how science can be fun.”

Although Kim and Jau will not be making the trip to Washington this year to compete in the National Science Bowl, they said they still gained a lot through the experience.

“I find a lot of fulfillment in helping other people. I also just think it’s fun,” Kim said.

That Science Bowl experience may even be shaping Kim’s future.“I think after I retire, I might like to be a teacher,” he said. “I do like teaching other people about science and everything that is interesting about it.”