The Venice High Academic Decathlon team and the Science Bowl team, both coached by Mr. Richard Erdman, have recently tested their knowledge of minutiae in regional competitions.

The Science Bowl team triumphed over archrival North Hollywood High, placing first among participating schools in the city of Los Angeles. The team may now be set for a national victory in competitions to be held between April 28 and May 2 in Washington, D.C., reclaiming a title for Venice that they first won in 1996 and then again in 1997.

The Academic Decathlon team was somewhat less successful. They qualified for the state competition, ranking ninth in a Los Angeles regional competition. But the team only placed twentieth among the teams competing on the state level.

The Science Bowl victory was bittersweet. Almost all of the members of North Hollywood’s team are Asian, and one of the judges was a Venice alumnus. A few of the North Hollywood team members alleged an anti-Asian and pro-Venice bias on the part of the judges. For the most part though, Mr. Erdman and the members of the team did not allow the allegations to take away from their victory. They generally dismissed the members as being "sore losers."

Mr. Erdman, who plans to retire at the end of next year, selects five people each for the A- and B-teams to go to the Science Bowl competitions. The A-team is composed of those people who Mr. Erdman perceives to be the most knowledgeable. This year’s A-team members are Andrew Bernstein, Lorenzo d’Amico, Nicole O’Keeffe and Seth Rotkin. Nigar Akhmedova, Meagan Bernstein, Zak Murez and Chris Poblete are on the B-team. Each member of the A-team received the $1,000 Hitachi Scholarship, and the school received $2,000 from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for science supplies, along with a trophy and a banner that Mr. Erdman will keep in his room alongside his many other ones from years past.

Mr. Erdman focuses most of his coaching efforts on the Science Bowl team. To prepare the Science Bowl team for competition, and to determine who ought to be on the team, Mr. Erdman holds quiz sessions almost every weekday in his room, Rm., 233, during lunch. People who want to be on the team, or anyone else who wishes to participate, buzz in on devices similar to those used in the real competition, answering questions he asks that he has accumulated mostly from science books used at Venice.

There are a total of nine members on Venice’s Academic Decathlon team, three with a GPA of 4.0 or higher, three with 3.0 to 3.9 GPAs and three with 2.0 to 2.9 GPAs. Alex Hornoff, Jonah Rosenthal and Kabir Singh are this year’s As. Peggy Sue Deaven, Emma Gerard and Aaron Kloman are the Bs. Chris Eastman, Bay Grabowski and Jonathan Westwood are the Cs.

Whether someone gets on the team is based on tests administered during fall semester by Mr. Erdman. The top three in each GPA category get on the team. Although there is a preparatory class for Academic Decathlon during spring semester, this year’s team members are not in it. Mr. Erdman does not feel that seniors should spend time on Academic Decathlon when they should, he says, be concentrating on college. This year’s Academic Decathlon team is composed entirely of seniors and this is how it usually is. Most of the preparation for the Decathlon is during fall semester when prospective team members stay for sixth and seventh period and take tests almost every day.