Rebels With a Clue

If only all teenagers would rebel this way.

When these high school kids stay up until the wee hours, it is to read biology or solve differential equations. They cut physics classes, but they already have taught themselves the entire course. And for a pure adolescent adrenaline rush? They have the thrills and chills of the National Science Bowl. “We are like your basic nerd crew, but we are cool nerds,” said Candice Kamachi, one of five Venice High School students who will leave in less than a week for Washington, D.C., where schools from across the country will join the national competition of intellect, nerve and some luck.

For Kamachi and her teammates, the contest is a chance to challenge their considerable brainpower and prove themselves the smartest of the smart. For Venice, it is an opportunity to emerge from the shadows of more upscale neighbors such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Palisades high schools and to push beyond the pall that hung over their community during a gang war two years ago.

“We definitely have the underdog mentality,” said Richard Erdman, coach of the team and a Venice High institution for 26 years. “When you think academics, you probably think University [High], and when you think the beach, you probably think Palisades. But unfortunately, when people think about us, they probably think about gangs, even though that’s not what we are about.”

Venice High won the Southern California regional competition in February, launching its way into next weekend’s National Science Bowl with a team as offbeat as the bohemian community it represents. Among the perspicacious fivesome are a senior who dropped out of school three years ago and a class salutatorian who entered America as a Vietnamese refugee. Another is a 15-year-old sophomore--already one of the top academic competitors in Los Angeles--who muses on whether he is being consumed by “19th century bourgeois angst.” Teams from the San Fernando Valley have won national Academic Decathlon championships and grabbed most of the glory for academic prowess in the Los Angeles area.

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But the “cool nerds” of Venice High School quietly have built a small dynasty of their own. In the four years since Southern California teams began competing in the National Science Bowl, Venice has won the regional competition three times. Van Nuys High School defeated the team last year, going on to win the national championship. But this year, Venice thrashed Van Nuys, raising hopes that this might be its year to shine on the national stage.

The Science Bowl is a high-anxiety, round-robin tournament that pits one school against another, until only two teams are left to vie for the championship. Players buzz in to answer “tossup” questions and, if they are correct, to solve additional bonus problems. Subjects range from computer science to physics, chemistry, astronomy and mathematics.

The bowl is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy to promote science and technology studies at a time when many American schools have been found lacking in the area. This year’s prize is a trip to Alaska to study petroleum engineering.

On the Venice team, captain David Dickinson, 16, plays the part of mature elder statesman. After he and teammate Noah Bray-Ali answered most questions in a practice session, Dickinson said: “We all have our moments. It varies from time to time.” He added: “It’s sort of like we have our own circadian rhythm.”

Bray-Ali is something of a phenom among phenoms. Only 15, he placed second citywide as an individual in this year’s academic decathlon. He talks like a graduate student.

He said it is the “superego of the rebel” that prompts him to stay up until 3 a.m. studying. Rather than hot rodding or partying, though, he is more likely reviewing German physicist Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle or other such arcana.

The entire Venice team has such nocturnal instincts, said Kamachi, who next fall will attend either Caltech or MIT. She often asks Bray-Ali to call her at home at 12:30 or 1 a.m. “That’s so I can keep working,” said Kamachi, the school’s valedictorian. “We all don’t sleep.”

No aspiring champion would be complete without overcoming some adversity, a characteristic fulfilled by the final two members of the Venice team.

Senior Le Hoang was born in China, where her parents sought refuge after the Vietnam War. The family immigrated to the United States when she was of preschool age. Now she lives with her mother, a seamstress, and father, who is unemployed, in a flat near Chinatown. She makes the long bus ride to the Westside each day to attend Venice’s language and foreign relations magnet program.

Finally, there is senior Chris Mayor, who three years ago began skipping classes at Venice in the midst of a family crisis and eventually flunked out. He was on the verge of applying for his high school equivalency degree when he re-enrolled.

His new devotion paid off with membership on both the Science Bowl and academic decathlon teams. Now he is headed for UC Berkeley in the fall to study biochemistry. “It feels like I have been through a lot,” Mayor said. “But it has paid off.”

The group was brought together by teacher and coach Erdman, who spends long hours digging out ever more obscure facts and typing out page after page of sample questions in an effort to stump his charges.

Erdman, who has been at Venice High since he graduated from UCLA 26 years ago, has seen many top students. But the current crop has shown extraordinary initiative. They completed Advanced Placement physics studies largely on their own when the class’s teacher left the school unexpectedly.

Erdman calls this “by far our best team ever,” but he knows his kids will face tough competition, including some teams composed of the best science students from entire states. “It’s tough,” Erdman said. “It’s very tough.”

Still, his team is willing to wax slightly more optimistic.

“I think we have a chance of going pretty far,” Mayor said. “Our goal is to take it all.”