The NJ State Regional Science Bowl just concluded on February 23rd, 2024. For context, my school only allows a competitor to participate twice in this event (in 7th grade and 8th grade), and we have tryouts in November. There's 10 spots on the team, which is split into A (top 5) and B (6–10). This is my second year on the A team, having been the 4th seed last year as a 7th grader, and I captained it this past Friday. This year's Science Bowl was held at PPPL in Princeton, similar to years before. My team and I were going into this competition as the previous runner-ups (2nd out of 16 schools), and we were aiming for first place this time. The Science Bowl is a double-elimination bracket competition, so if a team loses two matches, they are eliminated from the competition bracket. The last team to lose two matches is crowned the champion. Losing once meant you entered the 'One-Loss Bracket', and losing meant an immediate exit (2/2).
Overall, the NJ Science Bowl was a 10/10. Our coaches were very supportive, the facility was great, other teams were nice, and the organizers were pretty good. In our bracket, we got off to a great start by beating our first opponent 90-8. Afterwards, I'm pretty sure someone on Lawrenceville said, "We're about to play the team that Bridgewater just absolutely cooked." Long story short, we cooked them next because we're like that. We had lunch next, which wasn't provided this year. After lunch (which involved cookies), we played Newark, which was actually a pretty strong team, before we got into a strong rhythm and beat them too. At this point, only two teams, Bridgewater-Raritan (aka us) and Princeton Charter, still had an undefeated record (out of 16 teams), and that meant we would have to play each other in the first semi-final (No Loss Bracket Finals). The loser would enter the One-Loss Bracket Finals and would still be in the final if they successfully won that. So basically, we needed to win one match out of the next two to guarantee top 2, and we were already promised top 3.
We were leading by three points against Princeton Charter by halftime in the No Loss Bracket Finals, but ended up losing as they gained momentum quickly and took most of the toss-up questions with their speed. It was a bit frustrating because we knew the answers to all the questions; they were just faster by milliseconds. However, we went into the One-Loss Bracket Finals needing to eliminate the other team (which would end up in third place), so we went in and absolutely dominated that match. This meant we were back in the New Jersey Middle School Science Bowl Finals for the second year in a row (our school has only reached the finals four times in total), and this time I had the honor of being the captain. We ended up falling just short, but we were on a roll in the last three minutes or so, getting every single toss-up and their bonuses. It was a well-fought match, however, but they deserved to win.
That also means I've won second place (silver medal) two years in a row now and have the most Science Bowl medals of all time from BRMS (2). In the end, we learned a lot through Science Bowl, and I really appreciate everyone who has helped us along the way.
I would like to share some pictures of the brackets and the Science Bowl team below.
