PROVIDENCE JOURNAL (METRO EDITION)

March 7, 2008

By David Scharfenberg

For the 10th straight year, a team from Cranston High School West prepares for a national competition, to be held in Alaska

Pop quiz. During sea level rise, rates of shoreline retreat would be most pronounced in:

a. Rhode Island

b. Oregon

c. Montana

d. Florida

Stumped? No idea what a rate of shoreline retreat might be?

Then you'd probably be no match for the National Ocean Sciences Bowl team at Cranston High School West. The football squad might grab more headlines.

But this small assemblage of self-described geeks is nothing short of a juggernaut.

Last month, for the 10th straight year, the Cranston West team won a regional ocean sciences competition known as the Quahog Bowl. And next month, for the 10th straight year, the group will head to the national competition - this time in Seward, Alaska.

"I've never been to such high latitudes," said Pasha Sadikov, 14, the lone freshman on the squad.

Cranston West has taken the national crown twice, in 2003 and 2005, winning trips to Hawaii in the process.

Last year, the team fell just short, finishing second to a determined squad from Contoocook Valley Regional High School in Peterborough, N.H.

But that placement was good enough to win a trip to Bermuda, where the team did some nighttime snorkeling, visited a few historic forts and even set aside a little time for lab work.

This year, the prize for the first- and second-place finishers is a journey to Costa Rica.

One three-member team went by the name B12 - after an iceberg, not the vitamin - and the other was called Mola mola, after the heaviest bony fish in the world.

Gripping black hand-held devices with red buzzer buttons on top, the students listened intently as their coach, biology teacher and science department chairman Steven Krous, rattled off a series of questions touching on geology, geography and all-things-ocean.

There were questions about the compound responsible for a fish's silvery, reflective scales and the typical temperature of deep ocean water (2 to 3 degrees Celsius for those scoring at home).

Team captain Meaghen Sullivan, a 15year-old sophomore, came up vvith the answer to the head-scratcher about sea level rise and rates of shoreline retreat: Florida.

Sullivan, according to her coach and teammates, was the key to the team's final round heroics in the Quahog Bowl at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus in Groton last month.

"Meaghen totally intimidated them," said Krous with a smile, recalling a string of answers during a crucial stage of the competition.

"It was heautiful," added Katerina Sadikova, 18, a senior who is Pasha's older sister.

And the team, which also includes Sudha Panneerselveun, 17, and alternate Stefanie Rich, 17, seems confident heading into the national competition.

Run by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, a Washington-based nonprofit group that represents 95 public and private ocean research organizations, aquariums and industry groups, the National Ocean Sciences Bowl is entering its 11th year.

Twenty-five high schools from around the country, winners of regional competitions such as the Orca Bowl, Hurricane Bowl and La Jolla Surf Bowl, will square off - buzzing in on multiple-choice and short-answer questions and working out more involved team challenge queries.

Members of the Cranston West squad say they will have fun, if nothing else.

The team is clearly a tight-knit group: laughing easily, finishing each other's sentences and trading science questions from time to time.

They might he nerds, said Panneerselvam, but "at least we're nerds together."