Classical college bowl team competing at MIT

LYNN – The Lynn Classical College Bowl Team specializes in the obscure, studying the most specific and random academic facts in the hopes of gaining an edge when the competition gets tough.They meet every Tuesday to study like Jeopardy contestants in preparation for regional bowl competitions against other schools in the Boston area. The competitions are a cross between quiz shows and sporting events, pitting intelligent, well-rounded high school students against one another to test their knowledge in a variety of subjects.Today, the team will be competing for a larger prize than usual: a trip to the 11th annual National Ocean Sciences Bowl in Seward, Alaska. The group of 15 students from Classical will join bowl teams from 12 other schools in the area at the Blue Lobster Bowl regional competition, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.While the all-day competition is largely ocean-themed, with many questions on marine biology, students will have to know answers to questions from a wide academic spectrum if they want to take the April trip to Alaska.”Not all of the questions will have to do with marine biology, the competition is very diverse,” said chemistry teacher and bowl team representative Eleanor Zuberek. “We practice every Tuesday after school, and we focus on a lot of different kinds of questions to ask the kids. One question at a competition asked for the state that is furthest east and furthest west in the United States. The answer was Alaska, and the kids got it right. I didn’t know that, I would have said Maine.”The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is a program of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, based in Washington, D.C. The organization seeks to interest students in the ocean sciences as a college major and potential career. Approximately 2,000 students from over 300 high schools across the country will compete in regional competitions for a chance to attend the finals in Alaska.While a trip to the country’s 49th state would be a very worthwhile prize for winning the competition, Zuberek says the team members understand the competition will be fierce, and are not getting ahead of themselves when looking forward to the event.”We haven’t looked at that prize too closely,” she said. “We are going to take it one second at a time and have a good time at the competition.”