UHS Science Olympiad Teams Pull a Phenomenal Victory

“And the second place team is…University High School Black!”

The Black Team members looked at each other, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The next moment, we found ourselves being herded to the front of the room amid thunderous cheers and applause to accept our rather large team trophy. I remember handing the trophy to Chris Chan, one of our seniors who have been on the team since freshman year. Even our top rival, Catalina Foothills, was clapping enthusiastically for us with smiles on their faces. We posed outside for a group picture, all of us proudly brandishing our many individual medals and ribbons for the camera. On the ride home, the bus buzzed with excitement and shock at our spectacular win. Twenty minutes later…we were all fast asleep.

Most of us had stayed up into the wee hours of the morning before the competition, perfecting our double-sided “cheat sheets”, making sure we had all the information we needed for our respective events. I had wearily dragged myself into bed at around 3 am at the urging of my partner, who said that if I tried to study more, I would probably pass out during the actual test. A mere three hours later, the Black Team and White team had boarded the bus to Glendale Community College where the competition is held annually. We were all nervous, fatigued, and supremely cranky in those first hours of the competition. I remember sitting in the corner of our “waiting room” with my anatomy textbook and a can of Arizona tea to read just a bit more about the respiratory system. At the end of the grueling day –most of us had competed in 3-5 hour-long events each- we felt unsure of our performance, despite having given our best. Lo and behold, at the awards ceremony, the UHS teams found themselves receiving prize after prize after prize in each event; when the full results were released, we found that the Black Team had finished in the top 10 out of nearly 50 schools in all but two of the 26 events, for an overall finish of second place! The White Team, comprised of our newest members, finished tenth overall! This year’s results are the best UHS has seen in the last 4 years. For the past few years we have steadily grown stronger, with our Black Team moving up from 5^th to 4^th to 2^nd place. Our success this year has made us much more confident and we look forward to returning next year and to training new members as we all shoot for Nationals, which has now become a very real goal to us. If anyone is interested in joining Science Olympiad, you can talk to our sponsor, Dr. Tobin, or to one of our officers: President Mengda Qi, VP Conrad Hom, VP Harmony Zhang, Treasurer Monique Tran, Club Advisor Chris Chan, or me, the Secretary. Many of our veterans are graduating, so we are looking for lots of new members next year! We will release more information about next year’s club this fall.

Special thanks to Dr. Tobin and Mr. Wolf for putting in so much time and effort to help run and train our teams this year!

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