Consistency is key in any competition, and Manhattan High Science Olympiad is a prime example. Reaching top-three meet after meet, MHS SciOly capped off a successful season by taking home third place at State on April 4. This performance one-upped their fourth place result last year. However, MHS was unable to best familiar opponents in Blue Valley North (second) and Blue Valley West (first).
To be consistent in placing, SciOly has had to be consistent in individual events. Head coach Doug Andresen emphasizes placing top-eight in every single event, something that MHS achieved at State.
Highlighting their performance were first-place finishes by junior Solon Xia in Machines and senior Surya Menon in Circuit Lab.
“As they were announcing the results event by event, I was getting a little nervous because
our team wasn’t placing in the top three a lot, and our competitors were,” Xia said. “I was worried that we wouldn’t place overall as well, but when they announced that we got third, and I was very excited and also very surprised…I think we did about as good as I expected. Honestly, we definitely had a shot of doing better, but it’s always a toss up.”
At Regionals, MHS missed out on a medal by a margin of a single point and gold by three points. Their near miss at first at Regionals fueled their performance at State.
“We were quite prepared because we didn’t want to get fourth place again like we did last year at State,” Menon said. “Fourth at Regionals was also kind of disappointing…[Blue Valley North and Blue Valley West] are the two teams that you have at Regionals…It was essentially just Regionals all over again with a couple more teams.”
Previously, Manhattan has been plagued by small execution errors from not writing names on tests and only doing the front page of packets. MHS cleaned all of these miscues up at state, but their performance wasn’t perfect.
“In one of my events, Bungee Drop, we may have hit the surface on one of the two drops, which really lowered our scores,” Xia said. “So we did quite terribly in that event, and that really hurt us overall.”
State marks the end of the SciOly season and thus is any senior’s last competition.
“It’s been quite a journey these past two, three years I’ve done this. So, yeah, because you’re a senior now, so this is going to be your last year competing. State was my last tournament. I got a little choked up.”