La Palma, Mission Viejo Scholars Are Best of the Brightest

About 40 of the brightest high school students from Orange and San Diego counties fought a battle of the minds Saturday in a grueling three-hour competition designed to test their knowledge of American history, geography and current events.

The students, taking part in the second annual California Citizen Bee competitions, had to correctly answer a series of questions on such topics to test their academic acumen.

As the competition progressed, students were picked off one by one, falling victim to tricky questions about river boundaries, foreign leaders and long-ago wars.

When it was over, Tung Phan, 16, a junior at Kennedy High School in La Palma, and Dennis Ulrich, a senior at Mission Viejo High School, were the only ones left standing.

Both students won first-place honors in Region E, which covers Orange and San Diego counties. They were each awarded $500 and will represent their region in a statewide competition in April.

The winners of the statewide competition will receive cash awards of $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 for first, second and third place, respectively. The winners will also represent California in the national competition in Washington in June.

Organizers said the National Citizen Bee winner will bring home a $7,000 scholarship check. About 50,000 students in 40 states have participated this year, organizers said.

“It was a lot more difficult this year because there were so many more schools involved,” said Ulrich, 18, who placed second in last year’s competition.

Ulrich, who has a 3.89 grade-point average, said he wants to pursue a career in finance and “go into mergers and acquisitions.”

He has been accepted at UC Irvine and UC Riverside. However, he said, he hopes to attend New York University.

Like Ulrich, Phan, another first-place winner, said he would save the $500 for school. Phan, who plans to be a cardiologist or obstetrician, said he hopes to attend UC Irvine or UC Riverside.

“I thought the competition was extremely hard but somehow I managed to pull it out in the end,” said Phan, a straight A student who belongs to his school’s honor society, mock trial club and is an editor of the school newspaper.

Finishing behind Ulrich and Phan were: in second place, Mayumi Negishi, a senior at El Toro High School and Mark Goldrup, a senior at Mission Viejo High; in third place, Tri Nguyen, a junior at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, and Dierk Meierbachtol, Gompers Secondary in San Diego..

The California Citizen Bee joins 39 states across the nation that host the academic competition founded in 1985 by the Close Up Foundation. The Los Angeles Times was a major sponsor of the California competition.