On March 12th, 2022, the Green Hope Science Bowl team placed first in the National Science Bowl Regional competition against 15 other North Carolina teams.

Run by the U.S. Department of Energy, the competition is designed to not only test the math and science-based knowledge of students but also how well students can coordinate as a team to answer questions as quickly as possible. Students are expected to have a wide range of skills in physics, biology, environmental science, energy, chemistry, and mathematics.

The Green Hope team is highly-selective and students must prepare for months to be as successful as possible. Students must demonstrate exceptional levels of understanding in these six topics to even be considered during tryouts for the team.

This year’s five-person competitive team included: Srijan Oduru (Class of 2022),  Sashank Ganapathiraju (Class of 2022), Pranav Kosuri (Class of 2022), Harsh Ambardekar (Class of 2024), and Edward Zhang (Class of 2024) with Ms. Nicole Reed as the Club Advisor.

In an interview with the Green Hope Falcon, Sophomore Edward Zhang, the math and physics competitor, gave his opinion on both his and his team’s performance this year. “It took a lot of studying to get to where we are today. Our team met in Ms. Reed’s room every Tuesday to practice, and that doesn’t include all of the individual studying that we each did daily. Some days, we also met on Google Meet to practice even more,” stated Zhang.

With annual competitions like Science Bowl, one of the most critical parts is the growth of the team. With the majority of the team’s participants being returning members, they each emphasized how much they’ve grown individually and as a team over the years.

Defeating North Carolina School of Science and Math

One of the most significant parts of this competition was the long-strived for defeat of the NCSSM Science Bowl team consisting of other qualified students dedicated to science. “Last year, we were second to NCSSM by 10-20 points, but this year, we beat NCSSM by 60 points, and that is indicative of how much we’ve grown as a team in just a single year.”- Edward Zhang, Class of 2024.  With the NCSSM being a public high school in Durham focused on the science discipline, Green Hope’s team win means even that much more.

Integrating Technique

Since this year’s competition was virtual, questions were asked and timed individually for each team. Harsh Amardekar, the Earth Science and Physics competitor, reflected on how the competition format’s changes due to COVID-19 impacted the overall experience of the Bowl.  “In years past, the competition consisted of trying to answer as many questions as accurately as possible while still being faster than the other teams. But, because of COVID-19, every team just answered their set of questions while timed individually,” explained Harsh.

“Buzzing is Science Bowl. It’s tough to do the competition virtually because you lose the integral in-person aspect of competing directly with other teams,” added Srijan.

One shared sentiment amongst all five of the competitors included how much room was left for improvement after Regionals and in preparation for Nationals.  “Even though I got a good amount of questions right in Biology, I would definitely say that there’s still an insane amount of learning left to do. There were some topics I was weaker in and will require more work to better prepare,” stated Srijan.

With such a growth mindset in place, the team has not only enabled success during their competition a few weeks ago, but they also continue to encourage their teammates for future competitions as well.  Srijan stated, “We all have really high standards, so even if someone didn’t perform as well as they had initially wanted to, they still did an amazing job. I’m really proud of the entire team.”

Enthusiasm for Nationals

Despite most of the team being Seniors, they are excited to participate in Nationals to showcase how hard they’ve been working throughout high school for this important moment. This year’s High School National Semi-Finals takes place virtually on May 21st, 2022, and the top eight teams are then invited to the Finals in Washington D.C. from July 8th to July 12th, 2022.

“Having the opportunity to return to Nationals after so many years is one of the largest accomplishments, especially when rival schools like NCSSM make the competition even more competitive for our region. But, at the same time, it makes the competition so much more fun,” added Srijan.