By Jesika Henson

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MHS’ Science Olympiad team, who placed first during last year’s competition, took many first-time competitors into this year’s competition where they placed second overall after Iolani High School.

“I guess (winning second is) a little reminder that we need to work harder to win in a competition as fierce as Science Olympiad. I hope I can help next year’s team get to nationals because it’s a really great experience,” said Senior Adrianna Saymo.

The competition isn’t only about winning, it’s also about creating bonds with one’s teammates. “I think what I like most about the competition is mainly the bonding between your team members,” said first-year competitor Freshman Zachary Higa who competed in the Astronomy, Dynamic Planet and Geologic Mapping events, “You have that sense of camaraderie between them when you compete with them and it also gave me the opportunity to meet some of the other teams as well from other schools.”

Despite placing second, the team’s spirits weren’t lowered. “I’m happy, because it’s the first tournament that I competed in,” said Higa.

The Science Olympiad is a team competition involving different events in the areas of biology, chemistry, physics and even engineering. Students worked together with their partners to complete various tasks. “I focused on building a Rube Goldberg Machine for an event named Mission Possible,” said Saymo, who competed in the build events, “I helped my partner (Senior April-Joy McCann) with Compound Machines, a device created with two levers used to determine the mass of an unknown object given the mass of a known object.”

Communication is an essential part of the competition. “Every event you can have a partner, so you might not have the same partner for different events that you’re doing, so it’s really important that they’re able to communicate with different people,” said Science Olympiad adviser Tyson Kikugawa, “It also helps kind of to spread out the load, especially for testing events. So, for the testing events there’s this list of topics, and, usually, being able to communicate with your partner- ‘Okay, I’m going to take these topics and I’ll take this topics’ helps make it easier, you know, if you work together.”

In order to prepare for the competition, students had to either seek help or study independently depending on what event they were competing in. “For stuff like physics I can help them with or general science stuff. (Science teacher Matt Capps), who also helps the team, can help with a lot of the chemistry type events,” said Kikugawa, “For events that we can’t help them with, we’ll either try to find them a mentor or they just got to study on their own. And the build events, they can come in, they can use our tools and stuff, and practice and test.” Higa added, “Preparing for the competition, it’s mainly independent, but then you can feel free to get help from the coaches and the teachers, whatever you want.”

The team hopes to get a head start on practicing and meeting more for next year’s competition in order to improve their results next year.