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National champs add fifth straight crown
(by Tony Lange - May 30, 2012)
National champs add fifth straight crown
By TONY LANGE
Washington, D.C., Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin, now Florida -- the Solon Middle School Science Olympiad team has conquered five straight national tournament titles.
Wherever they go, the middle school Comets have a national reputation, 25-year head coach Drew Kirian said.
"It's interesting, because when we walk around campus, it says Solon on the T-shirts that we wear, but nowhere does is say Ohio," he said. "And people look at you and go to talk to you and say, 'Oh, yeah, you're from Ohio.' It's like, how do they know that? Or when we get off the bus and people ask us where we're from, we say Ohio, and they say, 'Oh, Solon, Ohio,' so it's kind of interesting, because they know who we are."
An after-school team activity, Science Olympiad is considered one of the nation's most prestigious and rigorous science, technology, engineering and math competitions.
The 2012 Science Olympiad National Tournament, held May 19 on the University of Central Florida campus, drew more than 3,000 students from 120 middle school and high school teams in 48 states.
Ninth-graders are eligible to compete on the middle school team, as they do at Solon.
The Solon Middle School team, which included 15 members and six alternates, placed in the top six in 14 of the 24 events, including two first places, six seconds, three thirds, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth.
With that effort, they beat runner-up Marie Murphy from the Chicago area by 62 points.
"Every single student on the team earned a medal," Mr. Kirian said. "This was probably the first time where everyone on the team was able to walk away with an individual event medal. So we work all together as a team, and the success of the team depends on all the individuals, not just one or two or anyone special."
Bringing home his first individual national medal, team captain Stephen Daynek teamed with Josh Eston to finish as runners-up in meteorology.
"Last year I did not medal at all," said Stephen, who is finishing up his ninth-grade year at Solon. "So I was real excited, because I didn't want to come home again without placing in any of my events. What we do is we really make sure both team members are strong enough to be able to carry the event themselves. So both of us were strong, and it was really a team effort."
Solon's other ninth-grade captain, Dorothy Chan, said this year was more pressure filled as she took on more responsibility to be a model for the team.
"There was also pressure to try and defend this title that we've had for four years, but it was also extremely fun, because it was Florida," said Dorothy, who took sixth place with teammate David Geng in the bottle-rocket competition. "Our team members are really hard workers. We're all really close to each other, and our success is to due to the overall effort of the team. We also have a really supportive community here in Solon, and we have great parents and great coaches."
Being a part of a winning streak adds a lot of pressure, Stephen said.
"You definitely don't want to be a part of the team that loses the streak," he said. "Going on stage to get the trophy, I can't describe it really. It was just a tone of relief, a tone of excitement, and I was just really happy to be there with my team and to finally have met this goal that we have been striving for this entire season."
Winning their events were Josh Eston and Rohin Devanathan in "Reach for the Stars" and Kevin Tang and Zach Stanik in "Storm the Castle."
Second place was awarded to Zach Bogorad, Rohin Devanathan and Grace Xu in experimental design, Kevin Tang and David Geng in "Keep the Heat," Josh Eston and Stephen Dayneka in meteorology, Zach Bogorad and David Geng in optics, Zach Bogorad and Lois Wu in "Road Scholar" and Sheng Zhang and Kathleen Cheng in helicopter egg drop.
Winning third place were Achuth Nair and Rohul Rambthatla in "Microbe Mission," Jonathan Wang and Rahul Rambhatla in towers and Chris Guo and Jonathan Wang in water quality.
Placing fourth were Chris Guo and Emily Wang in "Awesome Aquifer."
Placing fifth were Lois Wu and Grace Xu in food science.
Placing sixth were Dorothy Chan and David Geng in bottle rockets.
Next year's competition is schedule to be in Dayton.
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