NPHS Science Olympiad crushes the competition
On March 11, the NPHS Science Olympiad club won first place at the regional tournament at UCSB, so they will be competing in the Southern California state tournament at the California Institute of Technology on April 8. Science Olympiad is a club that encompasses a wide field of sciences in competition.
Science Olympiad is made up of 23 different events, spanning multiple sciences. Nathan Truong, senior, has participated in multiple events throughout high school. “The actual competition will vary depending on what you sign up for because you’ll sign up for certain events about certain subjects, whether that be geology or engineering or cryptology or coding.” Truong said.
Due to a variety of events, each member prepares differently. Skyler Lee, senior and president of Science Olympiad, has participated since he was a freshman. “For events like anatomy and physiology, members research the topics chosen for the current year. In Codebuster, members practice solving cryptograms, and in Bridge, members spend hours blueprinting their designs before building a wooden bridge structure,” Lee said.
The Science Olympiad is also collaborative, everyone needs to put in full effort for the team to succeed. John Ko, junior and vice president of Science Olympiad, reflects on this team experience. “In each event you usually have a partner to study with. You are usually with different partners for different events, which stimulates a collaborative environment,” Ko said. “The overall score of the team is based on how we do in every single event, so we are only as strong as our weakest chain.”
Although the club had qualified for state before COVID, competition was canceled, so state is a new experience for many. “We’re feeling alright, we don’t exactly know how well we stack up to some of the other teams because it’s the first time actually going to the state competition since the last time we qualified for it was back before COVID, ” Truong said.
