Ayden Huang (10), Alex Wang (12), Aaron Lin (12), Anthony Zhao (12) and Rishi Suri (10) hold the Regional Champion banner. The winning team from each of the 46 middle and 64 high school regionals competed in the National Finals, held in Washington, D.C., from April 24-28, 2025. “We hope to bring more awards to this amazing high school, which we’re so proud of [representing],” Zhao said. Photo courtesy of Anthony Zhao.

The Science Bowl team will attend the Eastern Missouri Regional Science Bowl tournament March 6-7 at Lindbergh High School. One team from the competition will advance to the U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl competition. 

Science Bowl is a buzzer-style competition where teams of four to five students are asked questions about biology, chemistry, Earth and space science, physics, math and energy. 

“We are super excited to bring our best to represent Ladue, and just further our scientific careers in our last year of high school,” Anthony Zhao (12) said.

The team meets every Monday and holds additional practices over the weekend. In February, the team placed seventh in the online Amador Valley Extravaganza of Science, where they competed and tested their knowledge against teams across the nation.

“We go over packets and we try to find gaps in our knowledge,” Alex Wang (12) said. “We try to better ourselves by working towards understanding what else we need to study and understand working as a team.”

In the 2025 season, the Science Bowl team placed first in regionals and advanced to the national tournament. Without Zhao being able to attend, the team was still able to place in the top 32 out of 67 teams. 

“We ended up placing in the top 32, which was a little unfortunate because Anthony, our bio main, was unable to attend nationals, which was a big hit to our team,” Wang said. “But in spite of that, we still did amazing. We’re very motivated to get a better placement than last year and just show up, give our best and give our all.” 

With the Science Bowl sponsor Theodore Waterson retiring and three seniors graduating at the end of the year, the team is looking for interested students to join. The team hopes to have multiple teams representing and competing for Ladue. 

“We are looking to expand our program,” Zhao said. “We have three seniors on our team, and we will be graduating next year, which will leave gaps in our program. We are looking to form a strong team tradition.”