The Manhattan High School Science Olympiad team has been busy preparing for their last tournament before Regionals.
“[This season] is going pretty well,” sophomore Segen Gish said. “We are consistently placing as a team.”
The squad spent the first weekend back from Winter Break at a tournament at Pembroke High School where the team took fourth place, coming off of a snow day.
“We know in some events we are going to do well, so if we could just work on the events we are struggling on right now, like one of mine is Experimental Design, we’re going to make a run at it before Regionals,” senior Advith Natarajan said.
In Science Olympiad, there are many different events for members to choose from. One of Natarajan’s events is Experimental Design, where a test coordinator gives the participants materials and they task you with creating your own experiment. The goal is to track data, form a hypothesis and discover variables all in a 50-minute time slot.
“There is a bunch of writing, data logging, and then analysis, so it’s a really coordinated effort,” Natarajan said.
They have one more tournament before their Regionals competition, one of their biggest competitions of the season.
“This has been my first year, so competing has been a lot of fun and we’ve had a lot of success as a team,” junior Elias Mattenson said. “I think we’re really prepared for it and I think we’ll do really well.”
After Regionals means it’s time to prepare for the State tournament, and the group has been putting in the work to take home gold at State.
“This year we are going to win State,” junior Mason Gish said. “We are going to Nationals.”
For the seniors on the team, this final stretch of the season means an emotional goodbye to an amazing community and activity.
“I think it means a lot, working with friends on different topics for the love of learning and constantly trying to improve,” Natarajan, who has competed in Science Olympiad since seventh grade, said. “This year, the work I’ve done the past three years has paid off the most in terms of results. But more than the results being good, it’s like the process of whether it’s calibrating the electric vehicle or learning about where my strong suits are. It’s just a fun experience.”
