Senior Lauren Brinsfield found a passion for engineering after joining the Science Olympiad team in seventh grade.
The team completely shaped her life and future, Brinsfield said. She plans to go to KU next year to study aerospace engineering.
“I’ve always loved space. I went to the Kennedy Space Center when I was 3 and wanted to be an astronaut and I always loved science,” Brinsfield said. “When I got my feet into engineering and did the hovercraft in middle school, that was my first real engineering challenge and I loved it.”
The middle and high school Science Olympiad teams will travel to Wichita next Saturday to compete in the state competition. Both teams will take 15 team members and two alternates.
Throughout the school year, Brinsfield spends about 15 hours a week organizing and studying for her events on top of her part-time job.
At the beginning of the season, she spends most of her free time putting binders of notes together. Closer to regionals and state, Brinsfield focuses on understanding past tests and studying unknown information. She will participate in code-busting and plane-building events at state.
Extended Learning Teacher Barbie Hartwell coaches both the middle and high school Science Olympiad teams. At state, the team will battle the other top 24 teams from Kansas.
The competitions have 23 events that take place at the same time. Hartwell said it was similar to the format of a track meet. Each one focuses on different topics in science education and includes work on hands-on projects, builds, labs and exams.
Examples of event topics include anatomy, ornithology, forensics, code-busting and gravity vehicle construction. The middle school team must learn topics like trigonometry.
“They have to learn it on their own,” Hartwell said. “They’re studying it, researching it, asking teachers, ‘Hey, can you explain this concept’ or going to some professional who can explain it more.”
Hartwell’s daughter, sophomore Ryleigh Hartwell, will participate in the gravity vehicle event at state.
The event is slightly altered each year, but she’s participated in it since joining the team in sixth grade. The car has to go down a ramp, over a speed bump and then stop at a specified point.
“It’s fun for me. It challenges me, which is something I need because I don’t get much of that in school,” Ryleigh said. “It’s good for my development.”
Freshman Nathan Steinlage will also be working on the gravity vehicle at state. After being involved for four years, Steinlage has seen Science Olympiad build on his knowledge of chemistry, physics and other concepts.
“I’ve always liked building and messing around with things,” Steinlage said. “I’ve liked it for all four years, and it’s continued to help with my classes.”
Seniors Kira Baker and Sam Walters will participate in the ornithology event. The test will draw upon any of the 159 birds that they were given at the beginning of the season.
They are asked about diet, physical features, habits, anatomical features, bird calls and to determine a species from a photo. The partners can use a notebook during their exam.
Junior Natalie Karten and sophomore Georgia Martin will participate in forensics at state. Karten and Martin will be given a fake crime scene and must test polymers, powders and plastics to find out how they were related to the scene.
“It’s also fun because it’s a lab where we get to light these powders on fire and do density tests with the plastics, and all that kind of stuff,” Karten said. “It’s really cool how we’re able to figure out what a powder is just from these tests and not having any other prior knowledge of it.”
After analyzing their materials and putting together the evidence, the team will create a final lab report. The team placed first in the event at regionals.
“The story aspect of it is also really fun because every single time you go it’s totally different. I like that aspect of it,” Martin said. “We’ve had everything from, like, a wild animal mauled a police officer to the Girl Scouts had their muffins stolen.”
Karten and Martin want to continue with their Science Olympiad topics after they graduate. Karten wants to go to school to eventually work as a medical examiner. Martin wants to investigate crime scenes or go into computer science after college.
Both agreed Science Olympiad has taught them how to study and continues to prepare them for higher education.
“This basis in anatomy that we both have now is going to be amazing for college classes and the rest of our lives,” Karten said. “If you’re in events that you love, it’s gonna help you for a really long time.”
In February, the high school team placed fourth at regionals. Regionals are made up of all the teams in the northeast region of Kansas. In the 2020-21 school year, the high school team placed first at the state.
The middle school team has gone to state every year since it was created six years ago. Since the past two years of competition had been virtual, this was the middle school team’s first encounter with a real meet. The team placed third and, as their coach, Hartwell said they were right in line to do well at state.
The high school team mentors the middle schoolers on a weekly basis. The two teams have similar events, which allow the high schoolers to help teach harder concepts to the younger team members.
“Our goal on the high school level is to build up the middle school kids, because it’s a lot harder than anything they’ve ever done, through mentoring and passing on their love of science,” Hartwell said.
Many members of the high school team must balance their time between honors classes, other activities, jobs and sports. They will come out of high school knowing how to study for college-level exams while succeeding at something extremely hard and being well-rounded, Hartwell said.
As the gifted teacher, Hartwell said most of her students do not have to study much in the classroom but once they participated in Science Olympiad they had to learn how to persevere and deal with frustration when things are hard.
“They might get five out of 50 questions right,” Hartwell said. “I think it prepares them a little bit more for college because generally before I started doing Science Olympiad with the kids, their first shot of failure was in college. This teaches them how to study and take notes.”
Before the two teams compete in state next Saturday, they will do team-building activities Friday in Wichita. Each high school team member will partner with a middle schooler to tour the Wichita State campus and then they will go mini-golfing and go-karting.
Hartwell said the team has great support from the community and administration. The team recently received their own trophy case and state-title board in the commons.
Brinsfield is working on pushing the administration to allow the team to have academic letters for her government class capstone project.
Reach reporter Sara Maloney at [email protected]
