The Townsend Harris Science Olympiad (SciOly) team competed at the Long Island Science Olympiad (LISO) invitational in Division C on January 7, with Team A placing 18th and Team B placing 25th out of 52 teams.

SciOly vice president Stacey Jiang said “the point of an invitational is so that we can get practice before the competitions that actually matter (Regionals, States, Nationals), and I think this competition was definitely worthwhile to attend for our team.”

SciOly president Quindy Pan said that the team competed in 23 events at the invitational. Team A’s best performance was in Wifi Lab, where they placed third. Team A was also able to place fifth in Codebusters and Fermi Questions, sixth in Dynamic Planet and Trajectory, ninth in Flight, and tenth in Anatomy and Physiology and Detector Building. Team B’s achievements included seventh in Codebusters and ninth in Disease Detectives, Dynamic Planet, and Write It Do It. 

The team’s overall placing is determined by the combination of each event’s placing and the school with the highest combined score will place higher.

Junior Amy Jiang said, “It was our first invitational of the season though, so I hope that we’ll get some better results for the next few competitions.”

Quindy said, “We also started later than many other teams, so I am content with how we performed on Saturday.”

Senior and treasurer of SciOly Meha Dhyani said, “Being our first invitational, all the placements and medals that our teammates earned were really rewarding, and boosted team morale.”

Besides their placement in the competition, members commented on other aspects of the invitational.

“I’m in [the] rocks and minerals [event] and I enjoyed having actual rock samples to look at because we usually only practice with pictures,” said Amy.

Stacey said, “One thing I really enjoyed during this competition was the time we spent bonding as a team in our homeroom after all the events were administered.” 

“I think that the beauty of SciOly is how close we’ve grown through our studies. We’re all dedicated to our respective events…We take responsibility for ourselves, and reflect on how we contribute to the team,” said Meha.