By Vincent Chow
It was a tense afternoon at Xavier University, Saturday, March 9. We, the Wyoming Science Olympiad team, had self-evaluated our performance, and concluded that there remained a thread of hope. Throughout the day, we’d made use of the skills and resources we’d been nurturing for the previous months. We had gathered research from astronomical databases, scientific journals, and hundreds of Wikipedia articles. We had fine-tuned home-made flutes and Rube Goldberg machines and load-bearing structures made of balsa wood. On the day of the event came a flurry of tests, note crunching, last-minute device adjustments, and crisscrossing the rainy Xavier campus. Then, when all was said and done, it came down to this. High school teams from across the Cincinnati area, clustered in a college gymnasium, awaiting the results.
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| Wyoming High School students and advisors after they won third place in the regional competition. |
In the end, Wyoming High School qualified for the State-level Science Olympiad competition, and placed third overall at regionals. All of our hard work, the hours we put in, and the science and engineering concepts we wrestled to understand, all paid off in the end, and it feels pretty great. For many of us, Science Olympiad has been a consistent activity in our lives since Middle School. I joined the program in sixth grade, and as a high school senior, this is my last year with the program, so I’m glad to end it on a strong note.
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| The Wyoming High School Seniors posed with the trophy, Vincent Chow, Eric Coghill, and Mikhaill Blaine. |
Through ups and downs, Science Olympiad has been a constant presence in my life from middle school on. I’ve gotten accustomed to waking early on a graciously small number of Saturdays to bus out with the rest of the team to schools across Ohio, where we practice our events at Invitational meets. I’ve researched and participated in events covering a wide range of topics, from electricity to electromagnetism, thermodynamics to entomology. And I’m hardly unique- most of the team members who stick with the club through high school are just as committed as I. As incumbent team captain Grace Desserich puts it: “This year’s team is one of the best that I’ve been a part of, and I’m just really proud of everyone for pulling out all the stops this year and doing all they could to bring us to state.”
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| The Wyoming Middle School Science Olympiad also had great success in the competitions during the school year. |
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