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Teens help brightest business minds shine
By LORRI HELFAND, Times Staff Writer CLEARWATER -- Sypris Electronics can call itself the Smartest Company in Tampa Bay. It won the title fair and square Wednesday at the Pinellas County Education Foundation's BrainBowl. For the ninth year the BrainBowl, sponsored by ALLTEL, pitted local companies against each other at Harborview Center for a quiz game patterned after high school Academic Team Competitions. Sypris and 14 other Tampa Bay corporations paid to brave mind-bending questions like: "What is the annual average precipitation for the entire planet?" or "How many distinguishable permutations can be made from the letters of the word statistics? The corporate troopers raised about $10,000 for the school district's Academic Team program, according to Terry Boehm, education foundation president. Contributions fund scholarships for top Academic Teams and members of the All-star Team selected for the state competition in April. At the BrainBowl, student Academic Team members returned the favor by helping out corporate teams with tough questions in the preliminary round. Other Academic Team members read quiz questions and acted as announcers for the event. Most companies said they benefitted from student support. "He knows more math than all of us put together," said Tampa Tribune film critic Bob Ross, referring to his team's assistant, Clearwater High senior Chad McDonie. For the preliminary round, all companies were given 50 questions with varying point values. The three teams with the highest score at the end of 30 minutes went on to the final round. Then Sypris, Raytheon and WTSP-Ch. 10 were on their own, without the aid of students. Practice takes different forms at various schools, but most students say preparation is pointless. "In academics you learn there's no way to really prepare for it," said senior Katherine Gomez, 17, event emcee and Pinellas Park Academic Team captain. Most companies agreed. "It's one of those tests that is impossible to study for," said Pete Nikiel, marketing director at WTSP-Ch. 10. Ross said: "We just wing it. There's no way to study for it." That philosophy usually works for the Tribune, which has won the competition twice in the past four years. But Sypris, formerly Group Technologies, takes a different approach. Staffers at Sypris prepare three months ahead of time. And several teams vie for the right to compete in the BrainBowl. It's about helping out community students, but it's also about pride, said Jeremy Rasmussen, Sypris principal engineer. "We want to get here, and we don't want to show poorly," he said. "It gives us chance to get involved and a chance show that we're not just about math or science." And there's quite a rivalry between Sypris and last year's winner. Before Wednesday's competition, each team had earned the title twice since the competition began in 1994. "We definitely wanted revenge," Rasmussen said with a smirk.
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
