Science Olympiad, as the name implies, is the Olympics of everything science. Dozens of teams come together on Saturdays to compete in events that involve anything from codebreaking to marine biology.
Usually, Manhattan High is part of the competition for gold, consistently placing fourth in their last few meets. If this was the real Olympics, MHS would be the USA. However, MHS is coming off of a disappointing fifth place performance Jan. 10 in Kansas City, hoping to bounce back in time for Regionals and State.
“It was a rough meet for us, a little disappointed in how we did,” senior Mason Gish said. “I don’t think anyone was super thrilled with all of their events, but we’re working hard at practice to improve that.”
Multiple members of SciOly commented on how pivotal practice is for success.
“Usually, each event has a binder or a sheet, depending on how much content,” senior Andrew Foltz said. “So you spend the entire time either practicing labs for the lab events, like Chem Lab and forensics, but most of the time, I’m just expanding my binder to get more information to use at events, so I have a higher chance of getting a question right.”
A SciOly meet consists of 23 events. Winning an event scores one point, second gets your team two points, and so on. The team with the fewest points wins. Events are split into two categories: study, lab and build.
“Study events are just tests that you take over a certain subject,” Gish said. “There’s stuff about the environment, physics, chemistry, also different sciences. And then for build events, you build something to perform a specific task. It has to fall within certain parameters for building it. In one of my events, Hovercraft, I create something that just hovers on a pocket of air.”
In order to rebound, the team has had to look critically on their performance and diagnose what went wrong.
“We gave it our all, but I think coming back off of winter break kind of hurt us a little bit,” coach Doug Andresen said. “We just need to get focused. I mean, I said I think everybody was rusty after break and that that hurt us. I don’t think everybody realized how quickly the tournament was after break.”
Not everything about their performance was negative, however. Foltz and his partner, junior Segen Gish, won Remote Sensing, an event that they hadn’t won all season.
“In remote sensing, it’s about satellites and how those can detect certain things, like aerosols in the air, volcanic ash, and how it affects climate change,” Foltz said.
SciOly has had success at regionals before. The team this year is strong and has performed well early in the season.
“One blip in the record is not going to hurt us,” Andresen said. We’re still a strong team. We just have to get a little bit more focused.”