Last weekend, the Manhattan High Science Olympiad team travelled to Wichita State University to compete in their state competition where they placed third in all of Kansas.

“I was definitely pretty happy with [third place],” team president Angelica Lang, senior, said. “There was some disappointment because we always go in with the mindset of trying to get first place but I think we’re all still very proud.”

The competition featured some of the best teams of 15 to 23 members from around the state, and featured even more events for teams to compete in. Every member competed in three to four events like Robotics, Structure Building or competed in the study events, where members basically took a test on a subject and whoever missed the least amount of questions won. The competition even included hands-on events like Experimental Design, where they performed a scientific experiment, and Game On, where competitors designed a game.

The MHS team has been preparing for state competition inside their Honors Science Investigations class, which focuses around Science Olympiad preparation. The class gave students time to practice their events for competition while still getting credit for school.

“It helped having the Science Olympiad class this year because it gave us a lot more time to work on our events,” Lang said. “We’re hoping more people can join next year. The class was announced so late that it was really only seniors who had enough free schedule to switch into the class so we’re hoping to have a lot of team members in the class next year. I think that would really help out the team possibly even win state.”

While the team would have loved to place first, they have used winning third place to push them forward to improve themselves. They encourage others to join the team to help them one day achieve first.

“I think [third place] provides encouragement for the team in the future to do better. It’s been the same team taking first for a long time now and we’re always pretty competitive to try and beat them,” Lang said. “But placing third still shows that our teams pretty great and um hopefully that encourages people to join the team next year.”