By Julia Gong

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. Because if you look just thirty degrees down, you’ll see the Maker Space in the admin building—the heart of the loved-by-all Science Olympiad team of Cary Academy. Last year, our Science Olympiad team had a very successful showing at the National Ready Regional Competition, automatically qualifying our Varsity team for the State Competition in April, where we managed to score competitively as well. The results for these tournaments are below:

National Ready Regional Competition Results:

Varsity Event Medalists

1st place: Entomology: Julia Gong (’17) and Kendall Bell (’15)

2nd place: Forensics: Yujian Tang (’15) and Charlie Moore (’15)

Write It, Do It: Hannah Chow (’15) and Maaya Dev (’15)

3rd place: Anatomy and Physiology: Jessie Liu (’15) and SzuIn Lim (’16)

Compound Machines: Maaya Dev (’15) and Charlie Moore (’15)

Duct Tape Challenge: Calvin Ma (’16) and Alex Yang (’16)

Protein Modeling (National Ready): Julia Gong (’17) and Kendall Bell (’15)

Technical Problem Solving (National Ready): Ivana Premasinghe (’15) and SzuIn Lim (’16)

Junior Varsity Event Medalists

1st place: Crave the Wave: Emma Briggs (’17) and Jaren Hubal (’16) (JV1)

3rd place: Entomology: Emma Briggs (’17) and Vera Wei (’16) (JV1)

4th place: Disease Detectives: AJ Frank (’16) and Renee Reynolds (’15) (JV1)

Forensics: Rachel George (’17) and Tyler Marshall (’17) (JV1)

Protein Modeling (National Ready): Anna Go (’17), Emma Briggs (’17) and Kiera Tai (’18) (JV1)

Technical Problem Solving (National Ready): Renee Reynolds (’15) and Sydney Tucker (’15) (JV1)

5th place: Dynamic Planet: Vera Wei (’16) and Jaren Hubal (’16) (JV1)

Experimental Design: Anna Go (’17) and Olivia Sherman (’17) (JV1)

It Matters: AJ Frank (’16) and Nathan DeYcaza (’16) (JV1)

Write It, Do It: Vera Wei (’16) and Jaren Hubal (’16) (JV1)

Technical Problem Solving (National Ready): Thomas Hoffman (’18) and Robert Schellenberger (’18) (JV2)

 

State Competition Results:

6th place overall

Entomology- Julia Gong (’17) and Kendall Bell (’15)

Experimental Design- Hannah Chow (’15), Maaya Dev (’15) and Ivana Premasinghe (’15)

7th place overall

Air Trajectory- JJ Lee (’16) and Neel Rao (’15)

Anatomy and Physiology- SzuIn Lim (’16) and Jessie Liu (’15)

9th place overall

Write It, Do it- Raven Watson (’15) and Maaya Dev (’15)

10th place overall

Duct Tape Challenge- Calvin Ma (’16) and Alex Yang (’16)

 

If you’re someone with a great knack for scientific inquiry, if you’re Sheldon Cooper, or if you just really like building things, consider joining our Science Olympiad team. Even if you’re not able to compete, there’s always room for another member—in addition to our Competitive Varsity and JV teams, we now have a Non-Competitive team that helps out with planning, designing, and helping out with events!

All of us are very excited about this year’s season. Although our team is not competing in the National Ready Regionals this year, we are not going to be any less prepared to take on the other NC schools! After much discussion and thorough planning of our wonderful coaches, Ms. MaLi Burnett, Dr. Matt Greenwolfe, and Ms. Rachel Atay, a very helpful Saturday Workshop schedule has been established, JV and Varsity teams have been assigned, and the complicated event assignments have been finalized. Even before event assignments, though, the club has been keeping busy.

We’ve been constantly working on two types of building: team-building, and, well, building THINGS. Having foreseen that building events will need extra preparation time leading up to the competition, our coaches devised a weekly rotation of building and action events in these past few weeks. Regardless of event assignments, every team member participated in a building event so that interests could be explored and events could be practiced. The first week, small groups completed the Duct Tape Challenge , which resulted in some very interesting duct tape structures and innovative designs. The next week, Bottle Rocket was assigned, with each team building two bottle rockets made from carbonated beverage bottles. Bottle rockets were built from cardboard, PVC pipes, construction paper—you name it! The action event Write-it Do-it was also carried out the following week.

Science Olympiad was also asked to showcase our diverse events on the Grandparent’s Day of Celebration, in the afternoon in the Fitness Center. From Astronomy to Disease Detectives, from Bridge to Electric Vehicle, and from Forensics to Wright Stuff, we pretty much have it all, and it was a very successful event!

With the Raleigh Regional Competition arriving quickly in early February, our team members will be working hard on their events to ready themselves for the tournament—and of course, having fun along the way!