N. Hollywood High Wins Science Bowl
Reigning national champion and perennial science powerhouse North Hollywood High School captured the regional Science Bowl title Saturday for the fifth year running. The five-member team will now move ahead to national competition to defend its title.
North Hollywood defeated the Van Nuys High School team in the final round of Science Bowl X competition, sponsored by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Venice and Grant high schools placed third and fourth, respectively.
Led by coach Len Soloff, the North Hollywood team members are David Lee, 17, and Julia Hu, 16, of Northridge; George Marti and Justin Burdick, both 17, of Studio City; and Zahra Yazdani, 16, of North Hollywood.
The regional competition drew 42 teams from 25 of the city’s private, parochial and Los Angeles Unified School District high schools.
Since 1995, every team that won the DWP Science Bowl has finished among the final four in national competition. Van Nuys won the national title in 1995. Venice captured top honors in 1996 and 1997.
“This region has the best record of any area in the country,” DWP spokesman Walter Zeisl said.
The theme for this year’s event--”100 Years of Engineering in Los Angeles”--saluted technical achievements in the city, among them construction of the California Aqueduct and freeways.
Based on the General Electric College Bowl, the Science Bowl pits two teams--each with four students and an alternate--against one another. The students must answer rapid-fire questions on subjects such as physics, chemistry, calculus, earth and space science and current events in technology.
North Hollywood will compete among 64 regional championship teams from 40 states in the U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C., May 3-6.
