This past Saturday, on Feb. 2, 2019, the top team, also known as the A team, of Virginia Kundrat’s Science Bowl Club participated in the 2019 invitational competition. This has been the event the teams have been preparing for all school year, since the end of summer and beginning of August. Alternating with after school practices, meetings, and outside of school get togethers, the members and head sponsor, Kundrat, felt ready for what was to come ahead of them this past weekend.

The first meet of the season, an invitational, is hosted once a year at Carmel High School, is competed with multiple nearby teams from Indiana. These teams come from Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and Lafayette, along with the B and C teams of Carmel. The results from this meet have yet to be determined, but the teams will be informed upon shortly.

The upper level State competition is in roughly three weeks. Six of the seven past school years the top team from Carmel has won the State competition and has advanced to Nationals. “Only one team from each state can advance. Therefore, this competition is a very big deal to my members in order for us to strive towards a win this season.” said Kundrat.

“Every competition pretty much works or runs the same way,” said Senior Kevin Liu, president and member of the A team. “So, this makes it easier because we know how to run our practices and meetings, and are able to be familiar with how the competitions will go,” said Liu. The competitions are set up with a random draw which places the teams into brackets. The teams then do round robin buzzer style competitions within the brackets. Next, the top teams from each bracket advance to a double elimination competition to determine the winning team. “Other teams can continue to participate once they are eliminated to get additional practice. This is efficient because you might have lost, but this still makes you feel like you’re a part of the overall experience,” said Liu.

“The purpose of these Science Bowl competitions, mainly invitationals and State, is to give different teams from all across the state additional practice since some of the smaller schools are not able to do this before regionals,” said Kundrat. “We are constantly waiting for the results, but until then, I know that my team proved their best effort and did great no matter what, and we are looking forward to the next State competition coming up soon.” By Riley Hamilton