Pat Lamb’s classroom was bulging with mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, friends, mentors and the Science Olympiad team toiling away in the middle of it all.

Manhattan High’s Science Olympiad team held their annual open house last Saturday and invited others to come view their work.

“It’s not like a basketball game or a football game where parents can just sit in the stands and watch their kids and see how well their doing; many of the events are behind closed doors,” coach and sponsor Richard Nelson said. “[The open house] helps motivate the kids to prepare and it gives the parents a chance to see what their students have been doing throughout the year; what we’ve been studying, what Science Olympiad is all about. The students stood up front and discussed their events with their parents and they conducted themselves really well and I think the parents really appreciated it.”

After a few hours of conversing, testing bridges, showing off robotic arms and more, parents were gently hushed out of the room as students bounced back to studying for tests and refining building events for the state competition at Wichita State University on April 2.

“I hope we do better than we’ve ever done,” Nelson said. “This year we don’t have as good a feel for [the competition] but…it’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility.”

The past few years, the team continued to get closer and closer to taking State and moving forward to Nationals. However, with budget cuts resulting in the loss of their class, Honors Science Investigations, the team’s momentum was shot down.

“The team is in pretty good shape but to be honest, because we lost our class and so many of our members participate in so many things, we don’t all actually get to interact very much,” Nelson said. “[The absence of the class has] definitely hurt our teamwork and communication… In past years we’ve had a much higher percentage of people who showed up to practice on Saturdays where we’d have a chance to check with them and see how their doing but this year, our team has been much more independent.”

Senior MacKenzie Gwinner agreed.

“It’s been a lot more difficult this year because we lost our class,” Gwinner said. “The class really helped the team communicate and kept me focused, and I felt angry [when I found out the class was cut]. I was frustrated that Science Olympiad gets such a small budget compared to other extracurriculars. It’s harder to get together with partners [and] I really think it will hurt us [at State].”

The team and the coaches encouraged students to sign up for the Science Olympiad class during enrollment with the hope that if there was a great enough interest, they could try to persuade the administration to offer the course again.

“Unfortunately, the numbers I’ve heard haven’t been large enough so I would suspect that we won’t have the class [again next year],” Nelson said.

Despite disappointing budget cuts, Gwinner is enjoying her second and final year as a part of the team.

“It’s very surreal,” Gwinner said. “I realize that this might be my last week but I haven’t really thought about it being over. I feel very fortunate to have had Mr. Lamb through my high school career and am sad for the upcoming classes who don’t get to experience a class with him. Science Olympiad has been a lot of fun. The people are great and we always work well together.”

“We’re going to miss everyone,” Nelson said. “Right now, everyone’s so busy that we haven’t had much time to think about [the season coming to an end]. We’ve had most of our seniors for a couple years so we’ve gotten to know the kids and enjoy the team with them so it’s bittersweet. I haven’t put that much thought into it but every once in awhile when I’m in a conversation with Mr. Lamb he’ll be like, ‘Well, next year you guys will be doing this on your own.’ It’s really been a pleasure working with Mr. Lamb. In many ways, he’s the heart and soul of the team. I kind of take care of the logistics but in terms of the motivation and setting high expectations, Mr. Lamb has been the spearhead for those things. I’ve really appreciated his involvement.”

For now, students have made plans to study on their own and stay after school to study and work on projects in hopes of paving their way to a win this upcoming Saturday.

“Last year we had a really strong team too and in my opinion, we were the best in the state,” Nelson said. “If it weren’t for a fluke accident we would’ve gotten first. I know we have a strong team this year. But is it as strong or stronger than last year’s? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”