Woodland Middle School's Science Olympiad team takes home gold

Hours upon hours of practice after school, hard work and passion paid off for the Woodland Middle School varsity science Olympiad team, which earned high marks at their first Illinois Science Olympiad state competition over the weekend.

Woodland's team of 20 students finished in first place in their division, their coach won the outstanding coach award and 13 students earned medals for individual events. Six of those individual medals were for first place finishes. The competition, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, featured 49 middle school teams from all across the state.

"We honestly just hoped to win something at our first state competition," Tobie Dyson, the team's coach and Woodland Middle science teacher, said. "We were beside ourselves to actually win our division."

The Science Olympiad was created to promote student interest in science, improve the quality of science education and provide recognition for outstanding science achievement by students and teachers. At the tournament, students competed in categories such as solar system, thermodynamics and meteorology.

Dyson said they started the team at Woodland four years ago, and interest grew and grew; this year they actually had to hold tryouts to determine which students ended up on the varsity team.

"Our goal was to qualify for state, and we practiced 3 to 4 hours after school each week starting in September," Dyson said. "This team is very hardworking and passionate about their events and preparing for competitions even setting up study groups outside of school to work evenings, weekends and school breaks."

Woodland Middle finished 16th of 49 middle school teams overall, and Dyson said they hope this showing is just the beginning for them.

"Now we hope to be even more successful next year and move up the ranks to be even more competitive with the other elite teams in our region and state," Dyson said.