Science Olympiad: the Road to Victory

Amongst the slew of active clubs at Masterman is Science Olympiad, a competition based club that participates in invitationals throughout the year. Leading this club is Masterman’s own Biology teacher Richard Zimny, along with four student co-leaders, Adriana Buvac-Drndic (‘24), Cameron Zhang (‘25), Aiden Sanxhaku (‘25), and Daniella Liang (‘25). The events that the team competes in have challenges within various sciences, from life, personal, and social sciences to technology and engineering. At a competition, members are generally in groups of two or three, but competing for the whole team. The tasks given are made up of three possibilities: build (creating something and bringing it with you to competition to test), lab (actively completing an experiment), and test (an extended test on knowledge within the specific science). Within these topics, several subcategories have been created to challenge the students, including Dynamic Planet, Astronomy, Ecology, Flight, and Forensics, to name a few. 

Recently, at the Dick Smith Memorial Competition, members of Science Olympiad triumphed in their respective categories, placing in a total of five events. The first win was Dynamic Planet, where the team got 10th place for demonstrating their knowledge of the processes that affect the Earth. Also winning 10th place are the members of the Flight team, where they crafted and tested a plane before the competition that remained airborne for as long as possible. The third and final team that won 10th place was in the Robot Tour category, where they created a robot that would follow a given track accurately. Moving up the ladder, the Detector Building team won 7th place, after building a probe that detected voltage and the concentration of sodium chloride in various water samples. The final win was in Ecology, where co-leader Adriana Buvac-Drndic and her partner Miran Andriyevsky (11) cleared the floor, placing first in this category for demonstrating knowledge and skills within Ecology. 

Following these wins, Masterman’s Science Olympiad has hopes of placing at states, after just falling short at 12th place in 2023. To get there, the team needs “More wins, more medals” as co-leader Cameron Zhang put it. Adriana is optimistic about the future of this team, saying how there is the “most involvement and enthusiasm from the underclassmen this year” and “I’m so proud of their current accomplishments and am so excited to see what they do in the future with our team.” From the looks of it, Science Olympiad will continue to prosper in the years to follow.