The 2018 Science Bowl team has been preparing for the invitational, regional, and national competitions since the week after Labor Day, with the top team getting ready even over the summer. However, these three upcoming competitions in January, February, and April cannot be successful without the practice that goes on during the weekly meetings. Almost every week alternating between Wednesdays and Thursdays, depending on student schedules, the 17 members of the three CHS science bowl teams meet in science teacher Virginia Kundrat’s room after school to discuss, scrimmage, and come together as a whole to prepare for a hopeful win.

The top A team, which consists of junior Iris Yan, senior Tony Ou, senior Kevin Liu, senior Rithwik Palivela, and senior Ryan Zhang, meet one extra day each week to work together as a team, and to scrimmage online through skype, with other teams across the country. These A team members participate in the weekly meetings with the whole team, which begin right after school until around 4:30, as well as this extra weekly meeting just by themselves, and for double the preparation, they even practice at home or at the CHS library.

“We start out the meetings by moving the desks into the certain arrangement for the scrimmages. It typically makes a super loud, screeching sound, but that is the only way to get it done fast. The meetings are not very long, so we use time management very seriously and save the messing around for our extra practices,” said senior Kevin Liu, president of Science Bowl and leader of the A team. “It’s basically a scrimmage,” said Kundrat, chemistry teacher and head sponsor of science bowl. Two out of the three teams will set up a buzzer system and face each other, and the third team will read the questions and keep track of score, rules, and other guidelines. Kundrat explains that the students will then rotate around, doing three sets of questions so that they can get a mixed variety of who the members are competing with.

“They run the meetings. I help out, but they take over,” said Kundrat, whose room the students meet in for the meetings and practices. She explains how she has more of an administrative role during the weekly meetings and practices. Kundrat occasionally helps the students set up towards the beginning, but once the students are settled in she usually grades papers while they are competing.  If the members are short handed, Kundrat will help them out by reading questions or keeping score, while she still has the job of the head sponsor.

“The purpose of the meetings is to practice, practice, practice,” said Kundrat, as she explained that this is the most important thing to do to be successful in the upcoming competitions.

The three Science Bowl teams have three upcoming competitions in January, February, and April. These competitions, invitationals, regionals, and nationals, cannot be successful without the practice that goes on during the meetings, as Virginia Kundrat explains. She and the 17 members of the three A, B, and C teams attend the weekly meetings and even extra practices outside of school, to achieve the greatness they desire after their hard work since August. By Riley Hamilton