National Ocean Science Bowl

It's been a busy weekend.

As some of you may know, this weekend was the date of the NOSB competition--National Ocean Science Bowl, also known as the Lake Sturgeon Bowl. It's a  competition held in Milwaukee around this time every year, and was initiated in 1998 in an attempt to encourage kids to delve deeper into marine and water sciences. It's a huge event--gathering kids from all over the state--and the winners move on to a national competition being held in Seattle this year. I was lucky enough to be selected as part of Spring Valley's team this year, and crazily enough,
we won.

Preparation was long.
We started back in October, meeting twice a week before school to go over power points on various topics out of an oceans textbook and quizzing one another with flashcards and online worksheets. For my part, I mostly just struggled to learn the basics while the two returning team members from last year--Claire Arneson and Tyler O'Keefe--simply reviewed and  honed the knowledge they already had. It was intimidating.

February came fast. We managed to get everything organized, and the two teams met at the local gas station with packed bags ready for Milwaukee. The first team (The A team) consisted of me, sophomore Esther Gland, and seniors Tyler O'Keefe, Tana O'Keefe, and Claire Arneson. The B team was a group of middle-schoolers (Craigen Anderson, Nate Hannack, Sierra Randen, and Kallie Stone) that had hopes of carrying on next year and who wanted to gain some experience in the competition. Despite their being rather squirrely, I have every confidence that they will.

Craigen and Nate performing acid/zebra mussel experiment
 with Russell Cuhel

Tyler, Kallie, and and Sierra at the Discovery World
 behind-the scenes tour

The drive was what you would expect--five hours crammed in the back of a van. After we settled into the hotel, we went over to the Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, where the organizers for the bowl were having an open-house for all of the competitors. I was practically dead on my feet by then, but there were a lot of very interesting presentations about everything from nanotechnology to the connections between hex mayflies and lake worms. There was a presentation later on about the upcoming competition, as well as a dress-up competition that we won by default (no one else remembered). We went back to the hotel exhausted, but then spent a restless night in strange beds waiting for a huge, nerve-wracking competition the next day. We set multiple alarms that night in case we didn't wake up in time, but I think every one of us was up long before they went off.

The competition started at 8:30. There were formalities to dispense with--sponsors to thank, rules to explain, and teams to announced--but soon enough we were in our first competition against Appleton West. The rules were carefully explained by the moderator--Russell Cuhel--who is a scientist at the local School of Freshwater Sciences. Condensed, they go something like this:

Esther, Sierra, Kallie, Craigen, and Nate

There's three phases to the competition: toss-up, bonus, and team challenge. Toss-ups anyone can answer by buzzing in, but you can't confer with your team. If you buzz in, you have to wait to be recognized and then say the answer back exactly as the moderator read it (multiple choice). If you answer before you're recognized, you've blurted. If you buzz in before the moderator finishes the question, you've interrupted. Interrupts are allowed (though you get docked if they're wrong), and blurts are not. Bonuses you get if you answer a toss-up right, and you can confer with your team on, but only the captain can answer. Team challenges are worksheets you do halfway through each round.

...And you do not mess up or else.

The first round was nerve-wracking, and I didn't buzz in once. Tyler and Claire swept through that round, the next, and every other round after in the first double elimination bracket. It's pretty easy to fall into the rhythm of the game after awhile, and I actually answered two whole questions! (One was about ammonites). There was a lunch break in there somewhere (fortunately, the organizers understand that when dealing with teenagers, a lot of food is required), and then we settled in for another round.

We continued on more or less the same, the questions getting steadily more difficult, and didn't encounter any defeats until Marshfield.

Marshfield is sort of our arch-nemesis. The competition usually comes down to Marshfield vs Spring Valley, and for a long while, Marshfield always came out on top. Last year, Spring Valley won state, but Marshfield was bumped out early due to some fluke loss somewhere in the double elimination before SV could compete against them. This year, we had to face them, and our first try didn't go well.

We lost our first match against Marshfield, and it was a little disappointing because that meant we couldn't rest for awhile. We weren't 'out, though--you have to be beaten twice to be out of the competition--and so we ran up and down some stairs a few times, cracked a few jokes, and then plunged back into the competition.

Rest break

We eventually faced Marshfield again. Since they hadn't been beaten yet, we had to beat them twice. We managed the first win by a hair. By that point, the questions were so hard it was almost a matter of luck whether you got them or not, and I was half-dead from exhaustion. We ran some more stairs after that round, and then went head-to-head with Marshfield once more. Everyone in the building (who'd been scattered for most of the day watching various competitions) was now gathered in the main room for the championship rounds, and the pressure was on. The first half of the round was close, and we were behind. On the team challenge worksheets, we did far better than we'd thought, however, and throughout the final half, we slowly pulled ahead. When time finally ran out, we were in the lead.

Considering all the work that went into it, I didn't feel that elated in the following five minutes or so. I was too tired to be excited. There were a lot of congratulations, pictures, and news flying via facebook and twitter faster than I could think (everyone back home knew within the hour). There was an awards ceremony, and we got a trophy that's basically see-through (if you see a picture of Claire very proudly holding nothing, that's what it is). When it was all over, we went back to the hotel and ordered pizza and cookies for supper.

The pizza was late, and we were all crabby and hungry for a long while, but once it came and we were able to gorge ourselves at long last, the realization that we were going to nationals finally set in. The nationals competition is going to be a lot tougher. The pace will be faster and the questions harder, and on top of the competition, there's also a political-oceans essay that we're going to have to write and then be briefed on by a board of politicians. We made it this far, though, and I'm excited beyond measure.

Keep a lookout for my post on nationals (sometime near the beginning of May). I'll try to be thorough and document everything that happens. My thanks to the team and Mrs. Huppert for the obvious reasons, and to everyone else involved in the ocean bowl. To my readers, as always, happy reading.

S.R. Koch

 

....And to those of you who know: fat guy on a horse.