Members of Paly’s Science Olympiad team proudly bear the medals won in this year’s state competition.

– Michael Yuan

Palo Alto High School’s Science Olympiad team placed second in the NorCal Science Olympiad state finals on Saturday at Clovis North High School in Fresno, demonstrating improvement from recent years.

This year has been a step up from placing third last year and an even bigger improvement from placing sixth in 2009. The last time Paly placed second was in 2008, according to SciOly club president Albert Lin.

Club presidents Lin and seniors Kevin Hu, Michael Yuan and Jenny Hong led the green team in competing against 23 other regional winners, finishing just behind powerhouse Mira Loma High School. The green team is Paly’s top SciOly team; there are two other teams that also attend regional competitions.

“Every year Mira Loma High School wins,” Yuan said. “And they did again this year, so that was a little disappointing, but this is our best showing in a while.”

With the combined scores of 14 top five finishes out of 23 different events, Paly’s SciOly team was able to surpass the other competing schools, including Henry M. Gunn High School, which placed 11th.

“We did better overall,” senior Chris Liu said. “We also had many more first place medals. Last year, I remember our team getting only around one or two first place medals.”

Yuan, Liu, Hu, juniors Daniel Shan and Mark Nishimura as well as sophomore Jeffrey Ling all brought back first place finishes in the events Dynamic Planet, Ecology, Optics and Sumo Bots.

Independent studying as well as group meetings helped the team prepare for the competition.

“As a team, we held frequent meetings in order to collaborate and organize our studying,” Hu said. “Also, we got together a few times throughout the year to design and build our various engineering events. As for myself, I mostly prepared by reading textbooks or sections of textbooks on each of my events.”

Hu attributes the team’s success to the strength of both the new and returning members.

“I think the lineup definitely helped,” Hu said. “For the most part, we lost the seniors from last year, and gained a few new underclassmen who had previously been on the second team. Of the newest members, the most valuable were probably Jeffrey Ling and Mark Nishimura, who both had first place finishes. Also, all of the returning members performed better this year, so as a team, we improved overall.” 

With this year’s impressive performance, the graduating senior members feel that they are leaving Paly’s SciOly team in good hands.

“Even though seven seniors are graduating from the Science Olympiad green team, I still see Paly getting pretty far,” Liu said. “We have a solid group of juniors who all did really well at states.”

Members of the Science Olympiad team believe that they have truly shown what they are capable of.

“Since we’ve done so well this year, we should definitely be able to repeat our success next year,” Ling said.