Preston Middle School team wins state Science Olympiad competition, headed to nationals
Preston Middle School’s top Science Olympiad team won Colorado’s state championship and will travel to the national championships next month in East Lansing, Michigan.
The Preston Purple team finished first in five of the 23 events, second in six others and third in three to easily outdistance the runner-up team of homeschoolers competing as Homeschool Science Colorado. Teams earn a point for where they finish in each of the events, with one point awarded for first place, two for second, etc., so the lowest score wins. Preston’s Purple team scored 124 points to the homeschoolers’ 143.
“It’s like a track meet,” Preston science teacher and coach Elizabeth Loyd said. “You have a team of 15 kids and they each compete in three to four events.” The top finishers in each event receive medals, she said, but only the winning team in the overall competition advances to the national championships.
Members of the winning team were: Samer Abdo, Johnlin Feng, Simon Havener, Skylar Kreml, Peyton Lin, Evan Mainz, Michelle Ren, Owen Riggs, Lilah Strote, Amita Suinn, Lucas Tishkowski, Alex Wang, Ella Wang and Maggie Yuan. Four of those students — Abdo, Mainz, Alex Wang and Ella Wang — are also members of a Preston team that won state and regional titles in the National Science Bowl and will compete in nationals in that competition April 25-29 in Washington, D.C. A team from Preston also advanced to the national Science Olympiad competition last year.
Three other PSD teams, including a second team from Preston, finished among the top seven in the middle school competition, and Fossil Ridge teams finished second and third in the high school division.
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Science Olympiad is an international nonprofit organization designed to improve the quality of science education and increase student interest in various science disciplines, according to its website. A portion of events rotate each year “to reflect the ever-changing nature of genetics, earth science, chemistry, anatomy, physics, geology, mechanical engineering and technology,” the website reads.
One competition this year, Loyd said, required teams to build a tower with the lightest material possible within contest parameters capable of supporting up to 35 pounds. Kinard Middle School, she said, won that one with a tower built of materials weighing just 3 grams. Preston Purple was second with a tower built with 6.5 grams of balsa wood that supported about 25 pounds, she said.
At the middle school level, Kinard’s Gold team finished third, Lesher’s top team fourth, Preston’s Teal team sixth and Wellington’s Maroon team seventh. The 30 teams that participated in the state championship all had to qualify through regional competition March 6. The No. 2 teams from Kinard and Wellington, as well as teams from PSD’s Webber and Cache la Poudre middle schools, also qualified for and competed in the state championships, held April 6 at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.
In the high school division, Homeschool Science Colorado edged out Fossil Ridge’s Black team by just two points, 133-135. Fossil Ridge’s Green team finished with 157 points, well ahead of fourth-place Steamboat Springs A (193). Poudre’s top team was sixth, while Rocky Mountain and a second Poudre team also qualified for and competed in the state championships.
“In Poudre School District, we really represent well,” Loyd said, noting that many of the Fossil Ridge students return to Preston and Kinard each year to help coach teams at their former schools. Her Preston teams this year, she said, had eight Fossil Ridge students helping coach specific events.
The national championships will be held May 24-25 on the campus of Michigan State University.
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Preston Middle School team qualifies for nationals in Science Olympiad
