The Big Sky Regional Science Bowl took place this year on March 8th at MSU Billings. This regional competition consisted of 14 teams from across the state, with two teams representing Billings Central. The team 1 members were seniors Matthew Rah, Casey Rah, Hank Jagodzinski, and Jacob Burmeister, and sophomore Alex Johnson. The team 2 members were juniors Cole Hoffman and Ellis Tillery, sophomore Nethanel Keener, and freshman Caleb Kay. The two coaches that accompanied these teams were theology teacher Father John Pankratz, who competed in Science Bowl himself in high school, and science teacher Jennifer Sogaard.
The Science Bowl competition is a fast-paced event composed of 6 categories: biology, chemistry, Earth and space science, physics, energy, and math. Teams play each other in head to head matches. During rounds, the moderator asks a toss-up question, which each team has 7 seconds to answer. If they answer the toss-up question correctly, then they are offered a bonus question, which they have 22 seconds to answer. Toss-up questions are worth 4 points, and bonus questions are worth 10 points. It is a team’s goal to accumulate as many points as possible to advance to the next round of the competition. The purpose of the first 5 rounds was to seed the teams for the elimination round. Once they got to the elimination round, it was sudden death for the championship.
Both teams made it to the quarterfinals of the elimination round. The second team could not keep up with Cut Bank team and was eliminated, while the first team advanced onwards. Team 2 captain Cole Hoffman was proud of how the 2nd team persevered, saying “I expected us to just barely break into quarterfinals or not at all, and we got into quarterfinals closer to 4th seed. I am fairly happy with our results and as nice as it would have been to go further, I think we achieved our expectations.”
Meanwhile, the 1st team dominated the competition, outscoring all of their opponents leading to the championship by at least 30 points. In the Championship, they faced off against the Billings West High School team 1, who had experienced similar margins of victory leading to the final. In the championship round, the competition was neck-and-neck, with West trailing Central by just a few points. The Rams managed to score a few bonus question points to have a strong lead, which they held onto for the rest of the competition to win the championship. According to senior Matthew Rah, “It was maybe the most stressful competition I’ve ever been in, but I think we did a great job in the final round and I’m proud of how we did.”
With that championship win, the team’s third consecutive, the Rams will compete in the National Science Bowl, which will held April 25th-29th in Washington, D.C.
