Manhattan High’s Science Olympiad team is set to leave for the Regional Competition at 5:45 a.m. Wednesday.

“We’re not really sure how prepared we are,” coach Richard Nelson said. “There are people who have conflicts with practice schedules and so we haven’t seen the entire team in its entirety for a while. Some of the things have been built at home so we haven’t had the chance to look at them yet. Some students have been preparing after school, some have been preparing at home, some have been coming to Saturday practices. Sometimes that means studying textbook materials and sometimes it means building devices that are tested. We’re probably working Tuesday night so we’ll be ready Wednesday morning. My overall feeling is that we’re less prepared this year than some years and that probably has a lot to do with the loss of our class – that was big.”

Though the class was a big advantage, the team is still striving to take Regionals and get to State and Nationals.

“I still wish we had the class, but I think the team will do just as good or better than how we did last year at regionals,” sophomore Stephanie Fu said. “I have been reading taking a lot of practice tests and updating my notes. I also am meeting with one of my partners to practice for the Game On event tomorrow. I’m really excited because the whole team has been working really hard during school, after school, and on the weekends, and I know we’ll do really well.”