Students from 2 Lake County schools top nation in engineering contest

Student teams from Libertyville and Vernon Hills high schools have received top scores in a national engineering competition, school officials said.

The Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering squads from the sister schools ranked first in separate divisions in a Junior Engineering Technical Society contest.

Additionally, Libertyville was ranked first overall, coach Peter Dawson said.

"I'm very excited and so are the kids," Dawson said. "They've worked so hard throughout their whole academic careers to build the set of skills necessary to win something like this."

The students on both teams -- representing Libertyville-Vernon Hills Area High School District 128 -- took the test in February but only recently learned their answers placed them atop the country.

The written tests were administered at sites throughout the country, Dawson said. The District 128 teams took the test at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

The two teams' results were ranked against others from Illinois, and then they advanced to the national level where they were judged again, Dawson said.

The national results were published late last month, Dawson said. The time between the test and the results left the students a bit disconnected from their accomplishments, he said, but they're still proud.

The District 128 community should be proud of the students, too, Vernon Hills High coach Josh Ravenscraft said.

"It allows the community to see how well our school does academically, and how much we excel," he said. "It speaks highly of all the teachers who have taught these kids."

The students on Libertyville High's championship team were: Lisa Branding of Libertyville; Sarah Cheng of Libertyville; Eric Li of Libertyville; Sharon Lo of Green Oaks; Margaret McCall of Libertyville; Julia Nee of Libertyville; Frank Yan of Libertyville; and Yuli Zhu of Green Oaks.

The teens on the Vernon Hills team were: Jason Lee of Vernon Hills; Zach Wheeler of Vernon Hills; Thomas Bersano of Libertyville; Evan Kozil of Vernon Hills; Josh Brickman of Mundelein; James Hallendorff of Vernon Hills; Diana Chen of Vernon Hills; and Kaz Gunning of Vernon Hills.

All of the students are seniors.

Libertyville High finished first in a different division in 2006, Dawson said. It didn't rank nationally last year.

Vernon Hills ranked 23rd last year and 37th in 2006, he said.