The Science Olympiad team placed second overall in the regional tournament March 4 at Baldwin Wallace University, qualifying for the state tournament to be held April 29 at Ohio State University. 

The team also placed first in the events forestry, code busters, detector building and remote sensing.

“We prepared incredibly well for regionals, which is why we did so well,” co-captain Kai Zhang said. “Going into the state tournament, I’m confident that if we keep preparing the way that we have been, we will be able to surpass our previous record.” 

Last year the team placed sixth, which was the highest the team has ever placed at the state tournament. 

Junior Vivian Myers discussed her experience competing at regionals. 

“It took a lot of hard work and dedication,” she said. “We practice pretty much every day after school, but it ended up being really fun seeing the team’s hard work pay off.” 

“I can’t wait to compete at states,” she added.

This was also a landmark year for Beachwood’s Science Olympiad team members because they hosted their first ever invitational tournament on Jan. 28. 

31 teams from 19 schools competed  in 23 different events. 

Co-captain Dhruv Seth explained why they wanted to host the invitational this year. 

“It was a consensus between the three captains this year,” Seth said. “It was something we wanted to do, and Beachwood had never done it before, even though we have placed really high in past invitationals. ” 

“The first priority was to coordinate with [the school] administration,” co-captain Kai Zheng said.  “We held some conferences [with administrators] during the summer to affirm that an invitational was a possibility.” 

After confirming with the school that an invitational was possible, the team set out to work. 

“Another [challenge] was gathering sponsors because hosting a competition is not cheap,” Zheng said. “Ultimately, the invitational doubles as a fundraiser for our team. Contacting and persuading sponsors was necessary for a smooth invitational.” 

Other than the technicalities of organizing the event, there was a lot of effort put into the event itself.

“We had to find rooms around the school building that teams could occupy,” co-captain Leana Adunts said. “We had to organize the building meticulously and make room for everyone. We also had to write exams for some events.” 

In order to lighten the burden, the Science Olympiad team divided the workload among team members.

“We hosted interviews among our own team members to form an invitational committee,” Seth said. “The point of that was to split the work evenly. For example, there was a person handling clean-up [and another handling] concessions.” 

Sophomore Chengyu Li was a member of this invitational committee. Her duties included managing the awards ceremony as well as organizing entertainment for the event. She stresses that teamwork helped make the event a success. 

“There was a period of time where we could not find any sponsors, and everyone on the team really stepped up and helped a lot,” she said. “They spread the word and got us a lot of sponsors that made it possible.” 

“I think the biggest part is communication,” she added. “Everyone was flexible and cooperative.”

Coach Alise Kubalgo along with many parents and teachers from the middle and high schools helped to run the tournament as well. 

The team’s efforts all came to fruition on the day of the event. In hindsight, the organizers reflect on what they learned, and how they can improve the event next year. 

“Event day went extremely smoothly,” Seth said. “We were really nervous, and there were some small unavoidable hiccups, but everything else went fine.”

“Obviously, since this was our first year hosting, there were going to be inevitable issues,” Zheng said. 

“The competition was valuable for this team because it establishes us as a legitimate competitor in Science Olympiad,” Zheng said. “Taking after the many other high-placing teams that hold invitationals, this will boost us toward greater heights.”

“I would keep a lot of it the same,” Seth said, “I would tackle sponsors earlier and branch out to more teams to help get more participants.”

Adunts learned a lot from the experience.

“It was really fun and taught me a lot about teamwork as well as  how to be efficient with everyone’s different strengths,” she said.

As the tournament host, Beachwood participated but did not compete in the tournament. The first place team was Solon, with Mayfield coming in second and Westlake placing third.