The Manhattan High school Science Olympiad team is gearing up to start their season with two weekly practices and an experienced team.

“We should do pretty good this season,” head coach Douglas Andresen said. “We are hoping to grab first place at Regionals and hopefully top two at State. We’ve got seven returning seniors this year, so things are looking good.”

Science Olympiad is a club that features an array of different science events. Students can choose to represent their squad in events such as earth and space science, chemistry, engineering and even more. 

Senior Lane Burgett represents the Manhattan squad in coding and programming events. 

“Science Olympiad is essentially an interscholastic STEM competition with 23 different events which range in all aspects of STEM,” Burgett said.

The team’s first tournament this weekend was online featuring tons of schools.

“Our first tournament is an online one in Georgia,” Burgett said. “We did pretty well last year.  Sometimes upwards of 100 teams do these things and we placed top ten in some of the events, which was crazy.”

The team is feeling like they could be national-bound this year.

“If we go past State we get to go to Michigan for Nationals,” Burgett said.

If you are interested in joining the Science Olympiad team, there is still a lot of room and events that need to be covered. 

“We need more people to join,” Burgett said. “If you have an interest there will be an event for you.”