Not all competitions are for the athletes at WS, Science Olympiad gives students with other talents the chance to show off what they know.
Every year 7,300 teams across the nation compete in the Science Olympiad. There are multiple levels like invitational, regional, state, and national.
The first ever recorded Science Olympiad was on November 23rd, 1974 at St Andrews Presbytarian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Dr. Barnes and Dr. David Wetmore were both the founders of the competition. There are four divisions in the competition, the WS team will be competing at the high school level. The events in the competition fall under five different categories, life personal and social science, earth and space science, physical science and chemistry, technology and engineering, and inquiry and nature of science. Most of the events require two team members to work together.
“There is so much more to science than the generic core-curriculum biology, chemistry, and physics,” said senior, Abdullah Choudhury.
Since 1985 competitions have been held at numerous colleges across the nation. One of the reigning champions is Troy High School in California. The high school has won nationals ten times, and won in 2015.
The club was created last year by the founder, senior, Abdullah Choudhury. The members meet every Monday to prepare for competitions, the most recent competition the team has entered was regionals on March 12th at Marshall High School. Science Olympia not only allows WS geniuses a chance to shine, but also teaches the members how to solve problems and use all that they’ve learned as a team. The members of the group are Julien Berger, Sai Kannan, Jessica Phan, Chantal McPhail, and Kyle Mahoney. The members discovered Science Olympiad through the science courses they have taken.
“At my old school I was in physics and my teacher introduced me to it, I joined with my friends and it’s my third year doing Science Olympiad,” said senior Jessica Phan.
Last year the team got 5th place at regionals as a first-year team and won Rookie Team of the year at State, which is an award given to the highest scoring new team in the state. The competition is a complex system where each team from every school will compete in twenty-three mini competitions. There are two different events, one is the knowledge event where each competitor has to learn material from one science subject. The other is the building event, where each team will build an object that requires scientific problem solving, for example a plane that can fly a reasonable distance.
“A sense of wanting to relive the moment,” said senior, Abdullah Choudhury.
In their most recent accomplishement, Science Olympiad qualified and is headed to States.