Several Palo Alto High School students are preparing for the California State Science Olympiad on April 13 after winning the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad competition on Feb. 9 at Foothill High School.

Paly senior Jeffrey Ling, president of the science team, was excited about qualifying for the states event and their victory at regionals.

“We won first place by a large margin with several individual medals,” he said.

Paly entered two teams into the competition, the White Team and the Green team; however, only the Green Team made it to the state competition, which will be held on April 13.

Senior Michael Wang, who focuses on the engineering parts of the competition, is optimistic for states.

“If we can boost our engineering chops we should be able to beat Mira Loma for the only position for Scioly Nationals,” Wang said.

The team plans on continuing their weekly practices in preparation for the states competition and has decided not to alter any of their training.

“We’re mostly doing the same practices and weekly meetings we did for regionals with the aim of improving on the places we need to work on,” Ling said.

Although competing was challenging and a lot of hard work, overall it was an enjoyable experience for Wang.

“While I was there it was super intense but fun,” Wang said. “The best part about it is the mountain of food that we had to keep our science brains working at full capacity.”

Students compete as a team against other schools in 23 different events that span the spectrum of science subjects, such as chemistry, physics, earth and space science, biology and engineering, according to the BARSO website.

“At the end of the day we dominated the study events and held our own at engineering, which put us 80 points ahead of second place,” Wang said.