National Science Bowl team going to nationals—again

For the second year in a row, a team from Greenhills is heading to the nation’s capital for the National Science Bowl finals.

Greenhills sent three Upper School teams to the NSB regional competition for the state of Michigan, held Feb. 28 at Saginaw Valley State University. This year 17 teams competed at the regional level.

The competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, consists of head-to head matches in which two teams of four students compete to correctly answer questions about chemistry, biology, physics, math, astronomy, earth science, and energy. The questions can be either multiple choice or short answer and are read aloud by the moderator. Each team has five seconds to try to answer the question, and the team that buzzes in first gets the first opportunity.

The Greenhills team of Tanwei Chen ’15, Frank Fazekas ’15, Nathan Joss ’15, Alex Reeves ’15 and Jackie Stokes ’15 won the competition, winning all of their matches in convincing fashion. They’ll travel to Washington D.C. for the second year in a row to represent Greenhills in the national competition, where they will compete among 150 other middle and high school teams from around the country.

This is only the second year competing in National Science Bowl for the Greenhills team, and they have had remarkable success, winning the regional competition both years.  In addition to the winning team, Greenhills’ Team 2 of Max Froelich ’17, Madeline Parks ’17, Jack Urquhart ’17 and Julian Wellman ’17, had a very strong showing, finishing  fifth out of 17 teams.  Greenhills’ third team of Grace Davis ’17, Faizan Hassan ’17, Eric Chen ’17 and Nabeel Rehemtulla ‘17 competed in the morning rounds and gained great competition experience.

“As with last year, I was awestruck by the science knowledge that the students on our teams have,” said Robert Ause, one of the team’s coaches. “Additionally, the team members know the strategy around the buzzing process so that they get to answer the questions first.  Our Team 1 has set a goal of finishing in the top 16 at Nationals in a month and a half.”

The group meets Fridays at lunch in the Greenhills physics room. Ause said new players are always welcome.

Nationals run from April 30 through May 4.