Woodinville High Students Shine at Technobowl, Taking First Place

By Joan Lee

On April 21, seven students from showed up to compete in two teams as a part of the Technobowl sponsored by the Society of American Military Engineers at the University of Washington. 

Sponsors also included a variety of local engineering and science consulting firms such as Shaw International, CH2MHil, HDR and others. Seven other high schools competed including Inglemoor, Holy Names, and Archbishop Murphy.

Technobowl is run in a Jeopardy-style format with categories focusing on math, sciences and engineering subjects. Woodinville’s first team, comprised of Marissa Lee (co-captain), Vikram Akam (co-captain), Karthik Ramesh and Erik Falcon, took first place. 

The team made the competition even more exciting by posting a score of -500 in the first match and then piling on 3900 points (one of the highest, if not the highest scores in any of the matches) in the second match before settling into a rhythm of solid victories for each of the following matches.   

In the finalist round, the Woodinville first team was dominant. Not only is Technobowl a challenging and competitive venue, but the prizes are wonderful.  The first place team took home a bag for full of prizes including a Kindle Fire for each team member. Marissa Lee also won a color graphing calculator for providing the correct answer to the only correctly answered Daily Double in the Finalist Round. 

The second team, comprised of Peter Lemke, Larry Taicz, and Jeremy Lindh shows all the signs and skills of keeping the Woodinville’s position in the Technobowl competition strong well into the future. Special thanks to faculty sponsor, Gary Thurman, and irrepressible adult volunteer, Dr. John Fraser for their ongoing commitment to building science skills into Woodinville High School students.

Students who are interested in testing their math and science skills can show up every Thursday after school for Science “Club” in Mr. Thurman’s room.