A team of students from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts earned recognition at the recent National Ocean Sciences Bowl.
The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is a nationwide, high school science competition focused on marine issues and knowledge. Students demonstrate their knowledge of marine and coastal science by answering questions from biology, physics, chemistry, geology, geography, mathematics and the social sciences. Each team consists of four students plus an alternate and a coach.
Seniors Emily Smith, Howard Grant Orlina, Amadeo Scott, Kasey Meyer and Hadley Medlock won eighth place in the 23rd annual National Ocean Sciences Bowl Finals. They also won sixth place in the Science Expert Briefing event held in addition to the finals. The team was coached by Dr. Lindsey Waddell, a geoscience and chemistry instructor at ASMSA.
ASMSA earned a trip to the finals after winning the Dolphin Challenge regional competition that was held in February by the Texas Sea Grant College Program at the Texas A&M University campus in Galveston, Texas. It was the third time in a row that ASMSA won the regional competition.
The National Ocean Sciences Bowl was scheduled to be held last week at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Park campus in Long Beach, Miss. The competition was held virtually for the first time in its history, however, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nineteen teams qualified to compete at the finals through regional competitions held across the nation. During the first round of the finals, teams answered a round of written questions. The top eight teams moved on to the next round of competition.
During in-person competition, teams compete head-to-head against each other in quiz bowl-style rounds during which teams buzz in to answer questions. In this year’s finals, the final teams were given two rounds of 20 multiple choice questions via a video conference session with judges. For each question they answered correctly, they were given the opportunity to buzz in for a bonus question on which the team could collaborate, Waddell said.
The group was narrowed after the two rounds to the final four and then again to the final two. This year’s competition was won by a team from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Mo.
Waddell wasn’t surprised that the team did well. Smith, who served as the captain of this year’s team, was a member of last year’s ASMSA team that won the Dolphin Challenge and participated in the 2019 NOSB. The other team members also competed on a second ASMSA team in last year’s regional competition.
“I knew it was going to be a strong team because they had all competed in last year’s region competition,” Waddell said. “Right after last year’s bowl ended, they wanted to start practicing for this year’s competition. Normally teams may take some time off and come back around to it the next year. They really jumped into it as a whole.”
She said she believes ASMSA’s eighth-place finish in the question-and-answer finals may be the highest finish of any Dolphin Challenge qualifier.
The team managed to overcome adversity on several levels in the Science Expert Briefing competition. The event requires teams to submit a briefing that highlights suggestions on a piece of legislation during a mock congressional hearing. They must include viewpoints of a federal, state, academic, industry and non-governmental organization on the legislation in the briefing. The contest judges serve as a mock congressional committee considering their proposals.
The briefing competition is normally used to help seed the teams for buzzer-style competition, Waddell said. Because of the virtual nature of this year’s competition, contest organizers made it a stand-alone event. Normally the briefing is due in March, around the time ASMSA would be holding spring break. However, teams weren’t notified until early April about this year’s changes, leaving less time to complete the briefing.
“It was hard,” Waddell said. “It’s already usually a crunch to get the Science Expert Briefing done and keep up with buzzer practice, which we usually resume after the briefing is submitted. But we didn’t learn the new rules until the week before.”
Team members split the briefing into individual sections each among themselves. They then combined the parts into the briefing and began practicing via Zoom for both the briefing hearing and the buzzer competition, Waddell said.
“They also did a lot of studying and reviewing on their own besides the collaboration over Zoom,” she said.
Smith competed in buzzer event, but she was unable to participate in the briefing event. Waddell said the team can only wonder what may have happened if they were able to participate in the competition as normal, but she is celebrating their accomplishments instead.
“I’m extremely proud of them,” she said. “When I think back, I didn’t get to see the ocean until I was 17. I didn’t study oceanography until I was in college. I think they are really well-positioned to stand out when they go to college.
“A lot of past team members are finding their niche in research at the university level in field related to marine science. This team has stuck together through thick and thin.”
Missing out getting to see the ocean and compete in person was disappointing for the team, she said.
“That’s the hardest part. These students had really earned that trip and didn’t get to have it. Three of the students were supposed to go to Costa Rica during spring break to work with sea turtles, so every time a sea turtle question came up, it was like a dagger in the heart,” Waddell said.
For more information on the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, visit nosb.org.