Redwood teams win academic competition

For the 10th year in a row, Redwood Middle School placed first in the statewide Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl academic competition. Both the seventh- and eighth-grade teams placed first in their categories.

Each team scored more than 100 points more than their nearest rival. The teams faced a battery of 100 questions in a computer-based quiz format that tested knowledge, cooperation, accuracy and speed on a variety of subjects.

The school's nine-member eighth-grade team included many students who participated on last year's winning team. This year they got 93 percent correct, scoring 1,182 points.

Marilyn Zick coached the group, composed of Nicholas Mattera, Alex Co, Brian Ginell, Shelby Norman, Julia Piper, Summer Si, Ashley Hong, Matt Aspinwall and Eddie Treshinsky. Earlier this year they placed second in the state at the Knowledge Master Open, a worldwide competition involving higher-level questions.

The seventh-grade team scored 1,175 points with 91 percent correct. The members are Alex Chen, Kevin Ho, Samir Matin, Frank Duan, Jaclyn Belleville, Michelle Peters, Chloe Walton, Tory Klein, Kevin Lu, Daniel Luo, Sumedh Shah, Lisa Zingerman, Andrew Jacocks, Brett Bailey, Janella Caravetta and Marco Caravetta.