The competition was made up of two phases: a written essay and two rounds of questions related to various academic disciplines.

The questions were based upon information acquired throughout the high school term as well as general knowledge.

Clark’s team was coordinated by our librarian, Susan Newcomer, and included sophomores William Bairamian and Samantha Lawler and freshmen Sandra Chung as an alternate, Rina Kim and Chester Ramos. Crescenta Valley, Hoover and Glendale High’s teams were comprised of mainly seniors and juniors.

The Scholastic Bowl team for Clark had been hard at work studying for the competition for well over a month, going over information the older students on the other teams had already taken classes for.

March 8 was the day for the essay portion. The students were given a prompt and an hour limit in which to write their essays.

On the night of the competition the scores for the essays were tallied up with Hoover in the lead with a score of 32, CV and Glendale each with 31 and Clark with 18.

Although the results were disappointing, Clark’s team remained optimistic.

At 7 p.m. the competition began, hosted by KNBC-Channel 4 weatherman, Fritz Coleman.

An excited Mrs. Newcomer added before the contest started, "It’s very exciting to be here tonight after the team put in so much hard work in the practices."

The first round began with questions featuring social science, language arts, math, science and fine arts. The teams were allowed to collaborate with each other and write the answers on white cards. The round ended with Hoover at 72, CV at 53, Glendale at 52 and Clark with a score of 23.

After a ten-minute intermission, the second round began. This portion was comprised of 50 questions answered by students buzzing before answering.

The competition ended with a winning score of 112 from Hoover. CV, the previous reigning champion, came in second with 67, Glendale in third place with 60 and Clark fourth with 27.

Hoover took home the awards for best essay score, best in quiz portion and best overall. The first prize of $500, the second of $125, the third of $75 and the fourth of $50 scholarships were awarded to the teams.

After the competition, Mrs. Newcomer, principal Doug Dall and some teachers from Clark gathered to offer some words of encouragement to Clark’s disheartened team members.

An optimistic Mr. Dall said, "[I am] very proud of the students. [It was] a valued attempt and we will do better next year."