In the Georgia Regional Science Bowl, held this year on February 7 at Carrollton High School, the Middle School’s B Team reached 3rd place while the A Team unexpectedly did not make it into the afternoon rounds.
In most academic quiz tournaments such as Science Bowl, the best players compete on the A Team, while emerging players compete on the B Team. This way of creating the teams made it surprising to many when Westminster’s B Team made it farther than the A Team, especially because the A Team beat the B Team in a head-to-head match.
The unexpected outcome resulted from the new format the tournament implemented this year. This format began with three round-robin brackets organized by skill level. The top two teams by matches won from each round-robin qualified to participate in six total semifinal rounds.
After lunch, the top four teams from the semifinals by total points qualified for an elimination tournament. Westminster’s B Team made it to this level. However, the A Team did not qualify for the elimination tournament because they were in a more difficult round-robin and faced harder teams; therefore, the A Team was not able to accumulate enough points.
In the elimination tournament, the B Team immediately lost to the #1 seed, Stallings Island Middle’s A Team, defeated the #4 seed, and finally fell to the #2 seed. The winning team, Stallings Island A, will represent Georgia in the national tournament held in Washington, DC, in April.
To prepare for the tournament, the teams decided to assign topics to each member through emails. Players specialized in topics such as Earth science, biology, and physics. The teams also used various strategies to advance themselves in the tournament. These tactics included debriefing for five minutes after each round and designating specific players to answer questions when other players were at a loss.
Science Bowl coach Leah Roberts felt proud of how the A Team handled not advancing into the elimination bracket with maturity. “[The team] wanted to [ask], “Hey, why did we not make it? We don’t understand,” Roberts says. “But they did so really respectfully and gracefully accepted the disappointing news [that] they just didn’t get enough points.”
Roberts admired the B Team for learning a lot on the fly. “I was super impressed with how well they adapted to picking up on little tiny game tricks and rules during the game,” Roberts says.
B Team captain Vevaan Sharda was happy that the team reached third place. “We were pretty nervous, but we felt pretty good, ‘cause that was our first tournament,” he says. “We have never done Science Bowl before, so getting third place was a pretty good achievement.”