Dressed for Success : Teachers Turn Playful to Honor North Hollywood High’s Science Bowl Win

NORTH HOLLYWOOD —  Keeping their promises to don a dress and shave half a mustache if their students came home champs, two North Hollywood High School science teachers briefly abandoned work for whimsy Monday morning to celebrate the weekend victories of their two teams in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s hotly contested Science Bowl.

The North Hollywood teams placed first and third, and a team from Sun Valley’s Francis Polytechnic High School placed second, outranking Venice High School, the reigning two-time national champions, who were eliminated before the quarterfinals.

North Hollywood will represent the region at the national Science Bowl competition in early May in Washington, D.C. The last Valley school to win the national competition was Van Nuys High in 1995.

Surrounded by his exhausted but jubilant students, science teacher Len Soloff--decked out in his wife’s brightly colored, striped dress--said he and fellow coach Koh Ikeda were delighted to honor the bargain they struck with the students mid-point in the competition, when they sought to lighten the mood of the stressed-out teens.

“This is absolutely the most exciting thing to happen in my career,” Soloff said of Saturday’s 11-match win at the DWP headquarters downtown. “It’s such a thrill after watching them study that hard, to win the whole thing. And by the way, the winning is great.”

North Hollywood’s A team, composed of Iris Ahronozitz, Emily Kuwahara, Greg Marsden, Michael Saji and Emily Wang bested 42 Los Angeles-area teams--including 21 from the Valley--in the grueling competition that tests the high school juniors’ and seniors’ knowledge of chemistry, biology, physics and mathematics.

The teams were grouped into six leagues of seven teams each, with each team playing six matches. The top two teams in each league advanced to a double-elimination tournament, culminating in North Hollywood’s 64-point win over second-place Polytechnic. North Hollywood High receives $1,000 in science equipment, materials or software and each of the five winning team members receive Hitachi scholarships of $1,000.

“It took a lot of focus to get the win,” said Wang, 16, who along with teammate Saji has earned a perfect 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. “The best part was the teamwork. Everybody really bonded.”

It didn’t take much to get the champions to work well together. Every team member is enrolled in the highly gifted magnet program, which requires a minimum IQ of 145 for admission. Each of the 10 students is also a National Merit finalist.

During the Science Bowl semifinals--the worst point in the competition, according to the students--the two North Hollywood teams faced off against each other, with Team A beating their friends on Team B by a slim margin.

“The win was just incredible,” said team captain Marsden, 17. “I’m still numb. It’ll take some time for this to sink in.”

Marsden, a senior, has the highest grade-point average in the school and was recently named a finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

After a week’s breather to catch up on sleep and recreational activities, the regional champions will resume their study schedule, which includes weekend sessions--and a few all-nighters--and academic “scrimmages” with their B-Team friends.

But it won’t be all work. They’ve factored in some time for merengue dancing, too, which helped ease the tension in the last go-round.

“It helps keep us loose,” Wang said. “We’ve got to have some fun, you know.”