A team of Wayzata High School students will travel to the National Science Bowl finals in Washington, D.C., this spring after taking first place at a regional competition in St. Paul over the weekend.

The top 16 high school and top 16 middle school teams at the national finals will win $1,000 for their schools' science departments, plus an additional prize for the top two high school teams.

Through March, middle school and high school teams will participate in 113 regional tournaments nationwide in hopes of advancing to the finals, which will take place April 26-30 this year. During science bowl competitions, students answer science-related questions and solve technical problems.

Geoffrey Chen, Matthew Piljoo Jeon, Aniket Bhalerao, Tommy Myers and Aayush Gupta make up Wayzata High School's first-place team. The regional competition was Saturday at Macalester College.

Rilyn Eischens is a University of Minnesota student reporter on assignment for the Star Tribune.