The Science Olympiad club recently won 1st place for two events in Bellville, on Nov. 11.

¨Science Olympiad is a national competition,¨ Coach Kevin Sonntag said.

In this club, there are possibly 28 events and the teams have to choose 21 of them in which to engage.  It’s almost like VEX. They can build catapults and airplanes, but it is also a mix of tests and how much knowledge they have.

The NHS Science Olympiad  team was established in 1989, but it vanished around 2017. One student from NHS, Tristian Yun approached science teacher Kevin Sonntag and asked if they could get it back up again. Sonntag has coached in the past and was willing to do it again.

To make this happen they talked to Principal Brian Wunderlich and luckily there was still some money for the Science Olympiad left from years ago.

¨The competitions are basically just like practices for regional and state,¨ Tristian Yun said. 

The Science Olympiad team performed well at the Belleville Invitational competing against 32 other teams.  They ended up medaling in 6 of the 9 events in which the team competed.

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The events that they placed in were:

Anatomy and Anatomy and Physiology  – first place

Dynamic Planet – first place

Code Analysis – second place

Experimental Design – fifth place

Fermi Questions – fifth place

Scrambler – sixth place

The students at the invitational were senior Tristin Yun, sophomore Coleton Van Thull, and juniors: Mason Grycowski and Karol Puc.

The students do not meet up after school; they gather during STAR time to talk about what they need to work on and discuss the events. There are four competitions in the year total; the Olympiad Tournaments Calendar is a helpful resource.

The NHS Science Olympiad team currently has seven students, which it makes it difficult for them to win.

“We’re looking for more people because as a team we didn’t do very well because we didn’t have enough people,” Sonntag said.