2 Teams From Southland Advance in Science Bowl

Teams from North Hollywood High School and Fullerton’s Troy High advanced to the finals Sunday in the national Science Bowl. However, another academic team from North Hollywood was knocked out of a separate national contest Sunday on economics

Two other California teams were among the eight squads nationwide advancing in today’s Science Bowl finals in Washington: Mira Loma High School in Sacramento and Albany High School in Albany.

The North Hollywood Science Bowl team, from the school’s highly gifted magnet program, came in second place nationally last year. The five-member squad went through a nail-biting double tie-breaker against New Mexico’s Albuquerque Academy in Sunday’s elimination rounds. That ended with the question: Cestoda and trematoda are part of what phylum?

“Platyhelminthes--flatworms,” said North Hollywood Team Captain Iris Ahronowitz, 17. “I knew the answer because I used to be obsessed with tapeworms when I was in seventh grade. That was really exciting.”

The key to her team’s success, Ahronowitz said by telephone after the competition, is keeping cool under pressure.

“To know something is one thing, “ she said. “But to know something and compete through an entire day and still keep your focus is something else.”

Winners of the Science Bowl, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, will be flown to Sydney, Australia, for a two-week course at the International Science School.

Meanwhile, also in Washington, North Hollywood’s rookie economics team was knocked out of the Fed Challenge, a contest sponsored by Citibank Corp. and the Federal Reserve Bank. North Hollywood was the first California school to compete in the economics contest, which continues today.

The teams were asked to discuss current economic indicators, such as the gross national product and the inflation rate, forecast economic trends and make a recommendation regarding short-term interest rates.

North Hollywood team member Jonathan Stout, 17, said he was happy with his team’s performance.

“I’m sure it was very close,” he said. “We weren’t the ‘winners, winners’--we’re just the winners we were before.”