“Time’s up,” announced the quizmaster, prompting Clark’s Scholastic Bowl team to raise their poster, the lights proudly illuminating their single-word answer “Diode” written sans panique. Clark answered correctly, while the other three teams failed to even guess. However, this was no surprise considering the question involved what Clark is most esteemed for: science and technology.

The 24th Annual GUSD Scholastic Bowl, held March 3 at Glendale High School, featured four competing teams from Glendale, Hoover, Crescenta Valley and Clark Magnet High Schools. Clark finished in third place, just nine points behind two-years-in-a-row 1st-place winner Hoover High.

Hoover High School junior Daphne Bogosian expressed her team’s collective triumph. “We’ve been practicing since November, and we really wanted to defend our title,” she said.

Representing Clark Magnet, under the coaching of librarian Susan Newcomer, were seniors Jeremiah Cortez, Anna Hakopian and Saikiran Ramanan, and juniors Aleksandr Sauchenkov and Joshua Valerio. “The competition was intense,” Cortez said. “We kept our hopes high and did the best we could.”

The Bowl featured 25 timed and 50 buzzer questions, with topics ranging from the liberal arts and sciences to geometry, geography and human anatomy. Correct answers awarded a team with two points, while incorrect answers subtracted one point. No responses to a question were neither rewarded nor penalized. The competition also featured a previously administered essay contest, which guaranteed Clark with a starting 32 points.

The competition was already fierce by the end of the 25 timed questions, with Clark at 50 points glazing just four points behind Crescenta Valley, already 10 points ahead of Glendale High. Hoover, although at 59 points, was not too far ahead.

By the end of the first 25 buzzer questions, Clark had sprinted to second place with 62 points, just four points behind Hoover and four ahead of Crescenta Valley. Glendale High was trailing behind with a modest 44 points.

As the final 25 questions went abuzz, Crescenta Valley tactically passed Clark by seven with 69 points, but fell short just two points from tying with Hoover at 71 points. Glendale High suffered with a miserable 41 points, never having recovered from their inertia.

Competing for her third time was junior Meagan Yuen of Hoover High, who acknowledged the encouragement of her family and friends. “[The competition] was a little bit harder than last year, but the audience did great with supporting us,” she said.

Saikiran Ramanan’s mother spoke of her mixed feelings after the winners were announced. “The Bowl was fantastic; the kids did amazingly well,” she said. “But this year the math was weaker… that is sad. But they still amaze me every year.”

The audience included students, parents and school officials from all four high schools. But while some 40 students showed up to support Glendale High’s team, Clark Panthers were nowhere in sight.

Mrs. Ramanan agreed that more students should come to support their schools. “Clark needs pride the most,” she said.

The competition was quizmastered by Fritz Coleman, a weatherman at KNBC-TV. Considered the “Best Weatherman” in Southern California, Coleman has served as the quizmaster for the past 18 Scholastic Bowls on a voluntary basis.