The Science Olympiad Team kicked off their season with BirdSO, their first competition of the year. Held at Temple City High School, the competition started from 7 am and ended at roughly 8 pm. 

Science Olympiad is a national competition in which students compete in 23 different events that each pertain to a different scientific field. Some events may strictly be written tests while others incorporate mechanical builds or may be a hybrid of both. Unfortunately, due to Covid circumstances, all competitions the past two years were held in satellite form, meaning that they were all done online from a set location. For example, last year, for California Regionals, the team took all their tests from the San Marino campus despite the competition technically being hosted by Antelope Valley College. This has caused a few issues as many of the events were forced to transition away from hands-on activities to written tests. Now, with Covid precautions lifted, competitions are now being done in person, causing a big change for all parties involved. 

BirdSO, standing for Bird Science Olympiad, was founded in 2020 by Science Olympiad alumni and aims to host enjoyable competition for all competitors involved. Last year, they hosted one of the biggest science olympiad competitions which featured over 120 teams fromm all across the nation. This year, 78 teams participated in their high school SoCal invitational with some teams coming over from as far as San Diego. 

Despite limited preparation time and a lack of study meetings, both Team A and Team B surpassed expectations. Team A managed to place 22nd while Team B, which had multiple members absent, still managed to place 41st. Notable competitors include Caitlyn Chwang, 10, Aaron Lee, 12, Adelynne Yang, 9, Kathy Jia, 11, Howard Hwang, 11, Sebastian Liong, 11, and Allyson Wang, 10; all of whom were awarded medals for placing in the top 10 in their own events with Caitlyn, Aaron, and Kathy all winning multiple medals. “I’m really proud of the team and how they did,” Michael Egan, 12, the president fo the Science Team, said. “Especially with our team captain Lillian Panning absent due to illness, it was really impressive for our team to do as well as we did. We also were severely lacking in equipment which was a little embarrassing, since we had to ask other teams to borrow their lab coats and goggles and were forced to measure things out with ticonderoga pencils instead of using rulers.”