By Aarav Sapra
For the past few months, the Science Olympiad teams at Williamsville East High School partook in a regional competition on Saturday, February 3rd. They competed against various teams across Western New York at SUNY Buffalo State College. The Science Olympiad competition started at 8 A.M. and lasted until the award ceremony at 5:30 P.M. It is a team competition with events where students contend against different teams for a higher score. Some events include Anatomy and Physiology, Experimental Design, Forensics, Optics, Ecology, and more. Science Olympiad also includes build events where students assemble a device for a specific build event and are required to achieve a particular goal. For instance, a build event like Air Trajectory is where students must design, construct, and calibrate a device capable of launching a projectile onto a target. The Science Olympiad teams here at Williamsville East High School include three teams: A team, B Team, and C Team. Captains of each team lead it, and Mrs. Weitz helps organize the teams and make it possible for Williamsville East to compete.
Before the competition, Michael Wang recently talked about how hard the C-team had worked, “It was just amazing how some people in our team had worked so hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if our team did well.” Some members of the team, like Fouzan Masood, stated, “These past few weeks have gotten me stressed, and I hope I get a medal.” Mrs. Weitz had also been helpful since the start of preparing for the competition. In addition, member Naman Kapoor stated, “Inter-team testing has been beneficial. It allows us to practice the skills we learned throughout the week and apply them to these tests”.
After these encouraging comments, the competition was yet to start. On February 3rd, all of the teams applied their knowledge of their events to dominate the competition. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the event, and many people felt that their events went exceptionally well. After many exams and trials, the award ceremony soon demonstrated the hard work Williamsville East put in. Williamsville East C Team had taken 12th place with excellent achievements in Anatomy and Physiology, Dynamic Planet, Experimental Design, Ecology and Microbe Mission. Williamsville East B Team had taken 6th place with extraordinary achievements in Disease Detective, Dynamic Planet, Forensics, Forestry, Microbe Mission, Scrambler and Tower. Last but not least, Williamsville East A Team had an outstanding placement of 2nd place. Incredible achievements include Air Trajectory, Anatomy and Physiology, Astronomy, Chemistry Lab, Codebusters, Detector Building, Disease Detectives, Dynamic Planet, Ecology, Experimental Design, Fermi Questions, Forestry, Fossils, Microbe Mission, Optics, Scrambler, Tower, Wind Power, and Write it Do It. Each team performed incredibly well, and they all deserve an award. However, not everyone was entirely happy; some members of the A Team were disappointed: “We lost to St. Joe by 2 points… 2 entire points!”. In conclusion, Williamsville East had done remarkably well compared to other teams. Although, the journey of the B and C teams ends here. We wish everyone luck on A Team who will be attending the state competition!
