Despite the extra challenge of snow days in the final prep week before regionals, the Science Olympiad team kept its streak alive Saturday and will head to state for the ninth straight year.
The team now has the chance to turn its four-in-a-row state championships into a fifth.
The high school team placed seventh out of 20 schools and the middle school team placed fourth out of 26 schools at regionals.
Teammates agreed the regional competition is often more difficult than state. During regionals, they compete against schools of all sizes while during the state competition they’re competing against smaller schools.
Coach Barbie Hartwell said that while the high school team thought this would be a rebuilding year, she thinks the team is just as strong, if not stronger. She’s proud of their success at regionals, she said.
Hartwell said the snow days made it difficult to get the whole team together to work on their events with their partners, but they still managed to place in the top half.
Senior Nate Steinlage said although last year’s team had some strong seniors, he knew that didn’t mean they were out of the fight this year.
“But as I found out in soccer, one of my sports, is that that doesn’t really matter sometimes,” he said.
He said he knew last year’s seniors were prepping the underclassmen to carry on a strong legacy, he said. He expected similar, if not better, results for this year.
Steinlage placed in the top six in his five events at regionals. He competed in air trajectory, helicopter, wind power, experiential design and code busters.
Steinlage has been around for a state run every year, and he’s confident another state title could be in the cards.
“I’m really happy with my performance, but also with some performances of other students and especially our underclassmen. We had a bunch of people step up and play big roles and very hard competition,” he said.
Junior Adria Chrislip was nervous heading into the day, but she was more sure of herself the longer it went on, she said. It turns out she wasn’t as unprepared as she thought she was, she said.
She competed in forensics, ecology, experimental design and chem lab. She said she’s grateful to see fellow students get involved with something that takes so much work.
Another chance at state is exciting, especially since she’s been on the team since eighth grade, she said. She does have to work hard and continue to do a lot of studying, she said.
“I’m just really grateful to have the opportunity to be in a club like this. I mean, not everyone enjoys this type of stuff, but I’m really glad that I’m able to experience it,” Chrislip said.
Junior Matus Brezovsky said the season has been good so far, and he felt confident going into regionals.
“We constantly ranked pretty good, and today was just another day, and we brought it in,” he said.
Brezovsky is an exchange student from Germany, so this is his first year on the team. He learned about it from his host brother who did it a couple of years ago, he said.
He’s feeling even better about the state competition since they’ll be competing against schools of similar sizes.
“I’m pretty confident that we can get this state championship,” he said.
The state competition will be April 5 at Wichita State.
Reach reporter Sara Maloney at [email protected].
