West Texas A&M University hosted the 23rd annual Pantex Plant Regional Science Bowl Saturday, Feb. 23. Canyon sent three teams to the event, two of which advanced to the afternoon rounds. The Canyon White team—captain Sierra Miller, Connor Parker, Meagan Taylor and Trevor Ferril—finished second in the tournament and won $500 for the science department.

The Pantex Science Bowl consisted of two portions. The day began with a morning round-robin qualifier that split 28 teams into five divisions. The top 16 teams advanced to the afternoon double-elimination tournament and played off for the championship. Amarillo Black won the title and will represent the Texas Panhandle at the National Science Bowl in April. Randall Black finished third after Canyon White defeated them in the semifinal.

Miller said the competition suited her interests well.

“I’m a nerd and I love science and I want to continue doing science,” Miller said. “I really loved it in eighth grade and just wanted to keep doing it and I really wanted to win.”

A former Canyon Junior High science teacher pulled Parker into Science Bowl.

“I think Mr. Berngen talked me into doing it,” Parker said. “I’ve done Science Bowl for six years. We got third place our seventh grade year, so I kept wanting to compete and get first.”

Taylor said the competition helped her look further into her planned major.

“I already knew that I wanted to go into mechanical engineering, and this just helped me study more into that on my own,” Taylor said.

Parker said he found what he wanted to do after college through Science Bowl.

“Science Bowl spurned my interest in biology,” Parker said. “I want to go into pre-med, but I’m going to major in biology.”

Miller said she noticed a difficulty increase from last year’s competition.

“It was really frustrating because there were so many questions we couldn’t answer,” Miller said. “Free response, we could at least come up with some kind of educated guess. We could use key words to come up with something that pertained to the question.”

Taylor said students know enough to take a chance even if they do not know everything about the subject.

“Trust what you think you know,” Taylor said. “Try to specialize in something rather than try to learn everything. There’s a lot more than what they teach you in school.”

Miller said students who want to compete next year and push to win should look to sources outside of textbooks.

“Watch Discovery Channel,” Miller said. “I’m not gonna lie; you learn so many random facts.”