Paly’s Science Olympiad Green Team will advance to state-level competition on April 18 at Delta College, alongside Mission San Jose High School and Gunn High School, after placing second at the Science Olympiad Bay Regional on Saturday.

Paly sent two teams to regionals, the Green Team and the White Team, which were at Foothill High School in Pleasonton. Each team consists of 15 students. Although both teams participate in the same events, the Green Team consists of members who compete more actively, while White Team is for newcomers and other individuals who wish to participate in Science Olympiad with less of a time commitment.

At regionals, Paly won the most gold medals of all 18 teams and tied with Mission San Jose for earning the total number of medals in first through third place, according to senior Sasha Targ, co-president of Paly SciOly’s study and logistics.

Each team’s ranking was determined by the team’s overall performance in 23 different events. Like last year, Mission San Jose earned first place, while Gunn High School placed third.

Many Green Team contestants placed in multiple events. Sophomore Kevin Hu placed first in all of his events, including both Herpetology and Ecology with junior Min Kim, and Cell Biology with Targ. Targ also placed first in Dynamic Planet with sophomore Michael Yuan, second in Environmental Chemistry with senior Jake Singh, and third in Health Science with junior Audrey Chan, who also placed third in Disease Detectives, an event concerning epidemiology and spread of diseases.

Junior co-president Erika Ji also placed first in all three of her events: Remote Sensing with sophomore Albert Lin; It’s About Time, in which each team builds a device that keeps track of how much time has passed in a specified interval, with sophomore Jenny Hong; and Technical Problem Solving with senior Auster Chen.

For the White Team, juniors Chris Liu and Joseph Yao placed second in Ecology. Yao and sophomore Michelle Chung claimed third place in Write-It Do-It. Finally, senior Tim Qin and junior Albert Chen placed third in Forensics.

“Everyone did very well in their events,” Targ said. “We had eight first-place medals for the Green Team, and the White Team placed three top-third places.”

Eighteen other teams from high schools in the Bay Area competed in different subjects including Ecology, Physics, and Environmental Chemistry.

Each event falls into two categories: study events and engineering events. For study events, contestants study for written tests and fulfill any lab requirements in their respective subjects. For engineering events, contestants build a device and demonstrate it at the competition.

Besides weekly lunch meetings, students participated in study sessions and individually studied to prepare for the tournament.

“There were some study meetings at Erika [Ji]’s house for the study events, but people mostly studied on their own,” said senior Justin Holmgren, president of SciOly’s engineering events.

Holmgren was also pleasantly surprised by the engineering team’s positive results.

“Surprisingly, we did decently,” Holmgren said. “We could have done a lot better if we hadn’t procrastinated so much, and we’re definitely going to prepare more for states.”

Holmgren hopes to place first at the state competition.

“I think that we’ll place in the top three at states,” Holmgren said. “Last year we got second, and we were really close to getting first.”

According to Targ, the level of competition was about the same as that of last year’s regional competition.

“We were more worried this year going in whether we’d make it to states or not,” Targ said. “We were happily surprised [by the results of the engineering events] because we didn’t prepare quite enough, but we pulled everything together in time.”