Posted on: Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Money matters to Iolani teens

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer

If you have a question about microeconomics, supply and demand or business trivia, you might want to direct it to Iolani's economics team.

The ability to answer these types of questions earned the four-member team the top prize in the 2005 National Economics Challenge, which finished up in New York yesterday.

Although Iolani has made it to the final round in the past, the win over Iowa yesterday was the first time a team from the school has been named champion.

"This is a remarkable thing," said Richard Rankin, an economics teacher who has coached Iolani's teams for 10 years. "It was really tough. We were lucky to win."

The competition, sponsored by the National Council on Economic Education and Goldman Sachs, began with 34,000 teams. Iolani had to win the state and regional contests before advancing to New York.

The team members — seniors Justin Van Etten, Lara Malins, Tyler Mizumoto and Reed Ayabe — won $3,000 each and a trophy yesterday, in addition to the expense-paid trip to the finals and $1,000 savings bonds they won at the regional competition. The team will also make a brief appearance this morning on "The Early Show" on CBS, something that was arranged before the team won the championship.

The win came as a surprise to the team members, who had no expectations going into the contest. "We hoped to win, but we didn't really know what the competition was like, so we just studied our hardest and came out on top," Van Etten said.

Mizumoto, who celebrated his 18th birthday along with the win yesterday, said there was only one bittersweet part of the victory: Original teammate Steve Schowalter was unable to join them.

Although Iolani was the favorite to win after having the top scores in the qualifying rounds, Mizumoto said the team was worried going into the finals because they had come from second place to win the regional contest. He didn't feel confident until the final question of the buzzer round eliminated the Iowa team.

"It felt really close the entire time," he said.

Malins, the only female team member in the finals, said the competition was a lot shorter than the preparation for it, which for the past month meant every lunch break, as well as reading the business section of the newspaper, researching online and taking tips from classmates.

"Our practice time really paid off," she said. "I think all of the questions are definitely based on things we knew."

However, while the concepts were familiar, the oral and written questions required a lot of thought, and a lot of math, especially since some of the multiple-choice questions contained more than one plausible answer. "You had to be very nitpicky and very thoughtful to be able to distinguish the answer," she said.

Ayabe, who plans to go into neuroscience or economics, said he didn't have much interest in economics until he took Rankin's class and discovered that it has real-life applications.

His favorite part of the competition has been meeting new people and getting close to his teammates. "I think we all have our own strengths, so we covered pretty much everything," he said.

While all four members are considering majoring in economics in college, only Van Etten seems set on going into an economics-related field.

"Economics has kind of always been a favorite for me," he said. "I like the concepts behind it and the fact that with a thorough study of economics you can pretend to predict the future."

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014.