By Faith Oak
The Science Team closed out another season with the regional Science Olympiad on Saturday, March 6.
The Science Team is broken up into two separate groups: Science Bowl and Science Olympiad. The two teams prepare for their respective events and competitions throughout the year.
In Science Olympiad, there are 15 members who compete in 23 events. An event is a sub-competition that focuses on a specific area of science, such as forensics or material science. An event can either be a “study event,” a straightforward test or one with stations, a “build event,” in which they build a contraption like a hovercraft or rube goldberg machine and test it against those of other teams, or a hybrid of the two.
In each event, two students participate against other teams of two. After competing, the teams are ranked by their results. After all the events have taken place, each events’ ranking is added up to form the team’s overall status. The top five, six, or seven teams can move on from Regionals to the State Championship. However, they also award medals to individuals for being in either the top six or seven in individual events.
This year, the captains of the Science Olympiad team were juniors Maanasi Shyno and Constance Chiang. They ran the team in partnership with their Build Master, Efaz Muhaimen. As team captains, they were responsible for running tryouts and planning study schedules. Muhaimen made sure that the build events were blueprinted and tested to work throughout the year.
“We monitor and make sure that the team knows what to study and how. We use our own system to keep students accountable for putting in at least two hours a week per event. We also test them to make sure their concepts are clear, help find resources, and give general pep talks,” Shyno said.
The preparations for Science Olympiad were extensive and rigorous. Science Olympiad was open every day after school until 4:45 p.m., and members were required to attend at least three times a week. During meetings, they typically did partner work and check-ins. Other days were dedicated to studying, since they overlapped with Science Bowl.
“Since every event is different, Science Olympiad requires a lot of self/partner- motivation and individual work. How everyone practices is pretty individualized, other than the fact that we write practice tests for all events to take every once in a while,” Shyno said.
Although our school’s Science Olympiad did not advance to the State competition, many people exceded during the competition and were ultimately awarded for their success. This year, juniors Fareeha Ameen, David Yang, Kyle Friedman and Maanasi Shyno won medals for scoring within the top five in their events. Juniors Constance Chiang, Efaz Muhaimen, Nathan Chung, David Thai and Timothy Nakamura also all made it to the top ten in their events.
While our school’s Science Olympiad journey ends here for the season, its members remain hopeful for next year.
To learn more about joining Science Team, students can attend its meetings, which are held every day after school in Room C7. Tryouts for next year will be held early next semester.
“We want people to know that the team is never set in stone, and that anyone who is ready to work hard can be successful in SciOly,” Shyno said.
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