The Science Olympiad team had a very successful Regional tournament at Rocky River High School on Mar. 8, placing second overall.

Junior Leo Wang is proud of the team’s performance. 

“Hawken was third place, and they weren’t even close to us,” he said. “Our placements in our events were some of the strongest placements in years.” 

Since they placed within the top six, the team qualifies for the state tournament April 26 at The Ohio State University, where the team placed fourth last year, the best performance in team history.

“This year we’re aiming for third,” Wang said. “We need to stay ahead of Mayfield and beat Centerfield.” 

The team also placed in many different events at Regionals.

Wang, Co-Captain Sophia Yan and sophomore Joseph Mo placed first in the Codebusters event. 

Co-Captain Tony Zheng and junior Junbo Wang placed first for Chem Lab. Freshman Antoni Hinczewski and junior Ida Chang got first place for Ecology.

Junior Lyndia Zheng and sophomore Nimisha Kasliwal placed second for Dynamic Planet and freshman Sarah Zhou and sophomore Eva Zheng placed second for the Write It, Do It event.

The season started strong at the Kenston Invitational on Jan. 18, where they placed sixth overall. 

Junior Leo Wang and Yan placed first in Tower. 

Additionally, Wang, Yan and Mo won third place in Codebusters. Eva Zheng and senior Amy Zhou won third place in Disease Detectives and Tony Zheng and Wang placed third in Chem Lab.

They also competed in the Solon Invitational on Feb. 1, where the team placed 11 overall out of more than 60 teams, and Leo Wang and Sophia Yan again won first at Tower.

Beachwood’s Science Olympiad is relatively small, with only 24 students, and competes against much larger schools.   

Each member competes in two events. They prepare for test events by studying and creating cheat sheets. 

“For Tower and Air Trajectory, it’s a lot of building, testing and adjusting,” Yan said. “For codebusters, I usually just do a lot of practice problems.”

Preparing for events can present a variety of obstacles. 

“Sometimes [in] building events, there are a lot of things that can go wrong that are very unexpected, and having to change in a short amount of time is challenging,” Yan said.

Because of the team’s small size, members are able to focus on competing with other schools rather than with each other. 

“I think we’re a pretty tight crew,” said Yan. “There’s a lot less competition within the team compared to larger schools.” 

“It allows us to focus more on our events instead of worrying about whether we’re going to get kicked off the team,”  she added.

The team has talented veterans, but also some very promising underclassmen. 

Tony Zheng mentioned freshman Sarah Zhou as a hard worker who has contributed a lot this year. Yan mentioned that Eva Zheng is quite diligent as well.

Participants learn a lot of new skills. 

“While it’s not exactly a real-world problem, I learned morse code for Science Olympiad and I used it once in a board game,” Yan said. 

“During build events we had to make a remote control, and mechanical engineering may come up later in life,” said Zheng. 

Competitors also have to  learn to be self-directed and to work collaboratively. 

“Being on good terms with your event partners is very important and will make things more fun,” said Yan.

Yan and Zheng shared their most memorable Science Olympiad moment. 

Team captains are always looking for new members to join. 

“Try it out, get a friend to do it with you,” Zheng said.