Woodland Middle School Science Olympiad Team Going to State Competition for First Time

Woodland Middle School's Science Olympiad Team is for the first time traveling to the state tournament April 20-21 at the University of Illinois.

Twenty team members - 15 varsity and five alternates - are planning to attend the competition and compete in all 23 events that cover physics, biology, earth science, chemistry, general science principles and engineering. They will be competing against 49 other middle school teams from across the state to win a chance to compete at the national level in May.

Woodland's team secured an opportunity to compete at the state level after placing fourth in the College of Lake County Science Olympiad Regional Tournament. Individually, varsity students won medals in 16 of the 23 events with a 1st place medal in Thermodynamics and 2nd place in "Potions and Poisons" and Write it, Do it (technical communication).

Science Olympiad is designed to promote student interest in science, improve the quality of science education and provide recognition for outstanding science achievement by students and teachers. This is only the fourth year there has been a team at the Middle School. Following tryouts this year, 35 students were chosen to represent the school.

"These students trained for three or more hours a week from September through March on high school or college level science. The success of the team this year in qualifying for State for the first time is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the team. The team could not be more excited to be competing at this level and showing how far they have come this year," said Tobie Dyson, Middle School science teacher and head coach for the team.

The team members are: Sarthak Agrawal, Dhruval Bhatt, Benjamin Isaac, Steven Judge, Prithika Karthikeyan, Eunice Kim, Nihar Kiran Kumar, Thenuka Paramanathan, Lindsey Prims, Adityaa Rana, Niharika Sapra, Ansh Shah, Yash Sharma, Mehtab Singh, Ranveer Singh, Kayla Tagudar, Kenith Taukolo, Natalie Towle, Erin Yoo and Irene Yoo.