Ahhhhhh ….. It’s the weekend and a chance to sleep in. Oh, no wait, that’s some other weekend not this weekend! This is Science Olympiad State Competition weekend. So at 6:30 Saturday morning Ms. Schneider and I are off to UCF in my little Scion xA stuffed to the gills (do cars have gills?) anyway, filled with airplanes, bridges, rubber lab coats, safety goggles and sundry other science materials.

By 7:30 am we are registering Windy Ridge’s 2 teams along with coaches from 50 some other teams, the best from all across the state of Florida. Outside our team and supporting parents are gathering to set up camp for a long day of competition. One more time our students compete in 23 events. Attach your wrist band, complete your event card and you are off to the first events at 9am. And so it goes through out the day: disease detectives, road scholar, fossils, experimental design, anatomy, battery buggy and more, until at 3:00 pm events done we gather again at “camp”. Now the wait for judges to complete their tallies.

Fast forward 3 hours and the award ceremony begins. Our students wait to hear their team called as the judges award individual medals for each event. It has been a tough day of competition and you can see the anticipation and anxiety on the faces of our students; will their hard work be enough? And then it happens Windy Ridge Gold, and again, and again with some bronze and slivers too. In total we take medals in 9 events! Now the individual awards are done and it’s time to announce the top 3 teams overall, of which the top 2 teams will go on to compete at the national meet in May. A quick look at the medal count shows a very close race between Archimedean Conservatory, Orlando Science Middle School and Windy Ridge but overall scores count each student’s place not just the top 3. There is no way to know.

The overall awards begin, we huddle together and listen, “in third place …… Orlando Science Middle School”. We cheer and some venture a tentative smile. I caution them we don’t know yet, not until we hear the words. Another huddle, then we hear “in second place ……. Windy Ridge!” The crowd goes wild well at least it seemed that way to us. We race to the podium pick up our trophy and pose for pictures. I think I spotted a few students signing autographs from adoring fans but I’m not sure. We wait one more time and “in first place Archimedean Conservatory.” We cheer again and congratulate our worthy opponents. It’s been a long, exciting and rewarding day. Now on to the National Competition at the University of Illinois on May 20-22.

Thanks again to all our amazing students, wonderful parents, volunteers and 9th grade assistants.

Here’s our individual medal winners:

Gold Medals:

Ecology: Kristen Williams and Tyler Powers
Experimental Design: Tyler Powers, Jeni Norwalk, and Trisha Sing
Trajectory: Steven Gilmour and Charlotte Labinski
Elevated Bridge: Steven Gilmour and Charlotte Labinski

Silver Medals:

Road Scholar: Jenaan Maali and Trisha Sing
Science Crime Busters: Maren Tomcsak and Jen Gluck

Bronze Medals:

Fossils: Kristen Williams and Maren Tomcsak
Solar System: Heather Gluck and Jenaan Maali
Wright Stuff: Steven Gilmour and Charlotte Labinski

Your Coaches,

Roger Grant and Carrieann Schneider