Naperville North Science Bowl Team Makes Good Showing at Nationals

Though they didn’t come away the victors, the Science Bowl team made a great showing last weekend at the 21st annual U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl final competition in Washington D.C.

The team was comprised of Eric Spieglan, Chetan Kumar, Avi Prakash, Vincent Chang, Edward Hu and coach Kevin Farrell, a physics teacher at Naperville North. The team took second place in the Design Challenge, which was also part of the weekend competition, according to Farrell. The challenge tested the students’ ability to critically solve a challenging scientific problem, he said.

“The students performed well in the round robin tournament in a very competitive division,” Farrell said.  The students finished with a four and four record with one of their victories coming against last year’s National winner.

The round robin, which took place last Sunday included 69 regional championship teams competing for a chance to make it to the final 16.

The Naperville North team’s loses came from three past national winners. One of the team’s losses was to this year’s National Champion. The winner in the high school division this year is Mira Loma High School from Sacramento, Calif.

In an earlier , Farrell said he had a lot of confidence in his team and he had hoped they would make it to the top 16 finalists in the quiz bowl, which resembles Jeopardy! but all the questions related to the science and math.