The Phillips Middle School Science Olympiad team of 18 seventh- and eighth-grade students placed third among 46 middle school teams in the 35th North Carolina Science
Olympiad tournament held May 1 at NC State University.
Science Olympiad is a program that encourages the development of the next generation of scientists and engineers through regional, state and national tournaments covering 23 different scientific events.
Tournaments are rigorous academic interscholastic competitions that consist of hands-on, interactive, challenging and inquiry-based events balanced between the various disciplines of biology, earth science, environmental science, chemistry, physics, engineering and scientific writing.
Students and coaches met to prepare for the competition on weekends, in the evenings and before and after school. Teams were found flying planes, blasting rockets, running battery-operated cars and catapulting balls in the hallways, gyms and fields of local schools. Other teams spent time mixing up chemicals in laboratories to determine nutritional content of food or to analyze evidence from a crime scene. Still other teams culled through books and learned how to determine the relative risks of disease exposure or how to identify birds, fossils and bones.
The hard work paid off for the students at the competition, according to trajectory team member George Hito. “Competition is when the real fun starts. Phillips came home with a third-place trophy and it’s something we are all proud of. Science Olympiad was a great decision and one I’ll be sure to make again in high school,†he said.