Olin Nafziger

The Science Olympiad team placed third overall in the state competition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on April 20. Since the team did not finish in the top two, it will not advance to the national competition. 

The Science Olympiad team placed third overall in the state competition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on April 20. Since the team did not finish in the top two, it will not advance to the national competition. 

19 students on the team also received individual awards. 

According to co-captain Anvi Padhi, the team was in much better shape at the state competition than they were at regionals. 

“Regionals was a bit rougher. We had a concussed teammate at that point,” Anvi, a senior, said. “This time we were in really strong form, and I think people did an incredible job of just knowing what we were getting into.”

Anvi noted this is the first time Science Olympiad has ranked third at an in-person competition. 

“We’ve gotten third once before, but it’s the highest we’ve ever gotten,” Anvi said. “That was during one of the online competition seasons, and going into an in-person season is a little different because the way that you experience the competition itself is different than how it would be online.”

Ray Han, a sophomore, won first place in optics, second place in detector building and fourth place in chemistry lab. 

“I was pretty happy, although I was a little disappointed that I did not win chem lab, because I thought we would win,” Ray said. 

Individual award winners include:

Smaya Anand, fifth place, towers; fifth place, forestry

Victor Chen, first place, fermi questions; first place, microbe mission

Hannah Dinner, first place, optics; second place, codebusters; second place, detector building

Ray Han, first place, optics; fourth place, chemistry lab; second place, detector building 

Keira Harter, fifth place, forestry; first place, microbe mission

Emma Heo, third place, scrambler 

Jack Hurst, second place, wind power

Maxine Hurst, fourth place, disease detectives; fourth place, chemistry lab; fifth place, tower

Uma Malani, second place, codebusters

Aneesh Pushparaj, third place, scrambler 

Mulan Wu, fourth place, forensics 

Ling Xie, first place, fermi questions; second place, wind power 

Sienna Yamini, fourth place, disease detectives; second place, code busters 

Sophia Zheng, fourth place, forensics

Alternates attending trial events:

Emilia Anitescu, third place, geocaching

Joshua Carter, third place, geocaching; third place, entomology 

Ronen Malani, fifth place, solar power

Gio Nicolai, fifth place, solar power

Rachel Xiang, third place, entomology