On May 12, the Boston Latin School Science Team caught their Pikachus to host their annual escape room event with a Pokémon theme.

The escape room was made up of skill-based events that correlated to different Pokémon types. Attendees were put into teams and assigned to breakout rooms over Zoom. Each club officer rotated around the rooms with activities that reflected their own scientific expertise. The assigned teams had to complete activities based on these topics to receive badges.

One of the winners of the event, BLS Science Team member Simon Hay Sutton (VI), comments, “The event overall was really fun and cool. Some things brought us out of our comfort zone. My favorite event was the bird’s event, [because] my team got a hundred percent on that.”

The avian activity had attendees match Pokémon that were inspired by real birds to what habitat they lived in. Other stations also directly correlated to Pokémon types, such as the water quality station with water type Pokémon, the circuit labs station with electric type and the astronomy station with dark type.

The event concluded with a tiebreaker inspired by Who’s That Pokémon?, a segment of the actual Pokémon show. Officers quickly sketched a Pokémon and attendees attempted to guess which one it was.

Planning for the annual event started in late April. As officers brainstormed and organized their plans and ideas, they realized that a Pokémon theme could apply to all topics of science being presented while adding a fun twist.

Admission to the event was originally five dollars, much like their previous escape rooms. This year, however, the club decided to make the event free, because not enough people registered to attend. Due to these circumstances, the event became more accessible and casual for students.

Lucy Yu (II), BLS Science Team Internal Liaison, says, “We [usually] do it as a fundraiser, […] so that we can raise some funds to sponsor some of our competitions and events. […] It was definitely a good idea to make it free, though, because it encouraged a lot more participation.”

Their aim was to increase attention and engagement from BLS students, specifically seventh and eighth graders. With the Pokémon event, they were able to achieve this goal.

Officer Megan Li (III) concludes, “Overall, the event went pretty well; we had a decent amount of people attending. It was slightly chaotic, but that’s how all Science Team stuff goes.”