Samo wins nationwide Ocean Bowl

On Sunday, April 23, the Samo Ocean Science Bowl team won the national competition at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.The yearly Oceans Bowl competition involves quiz-bowl-style questions on many ocean science topics. The Samo team is run through Acadeca.Competitor Rhys Gaida (’17) explains that in order to prepare for the Ocean Bowl, students have to create hundreds of flash cards and memorize them.“It’s been a lot of work, especially in the competition years,” Gaida said. “The more you do [to prepare], the more efficient you get at memorizing them.”Due to the amount of information, it’s difficult to deal with the stress of competing. According to Ryu Akiba (’18), this was a major downfall for the Samo team in the previous two years.“Sometimes you just have to go through [stress], other times the team collapses,” Akiba said. “It happened, that’s why we lost twice at nationals.”According to Gaida, he understands the importance of having a good, competent team; this year all the pieces fell into place.Many of the current team members will be continuing next year, in hopes of winning a second championship.