The school Science Olympiad Team participated in their first tournament of the year: BirdSO Invitational. The invitational, which took place at USC, featured 83 high school teams and 72 middle school teams, making it the biggest Science Olympiad tournament ever.
Because of the new venue, registering for the tournament was much more complicated. Team members had to fill out a total of six forms which changed last second, making the entire registration process very chaotic. “Originally, we only had to fill out two online forms, but the organization behind the tournament added a bunch of safety forms that made things a lot more difficult,” Sciteam President Sebastian Liong said. “Even though one of the main people in charge was a former San Marino alumni, communication between us and the BirdSO organization got a little complicated towards the end.”
At the tournament, the team faced a few difficulties, which stemmed from parking issues. “One of the team members was late so when we tried to park at USC, the line was like an hour long so I ended up checking in our team late. We also had to pay money in order to park which made things even worse,” Liong said. “Since we couldn’t participate in the competition checking in first and getting wristbands, a lot of our competitors were late to their first events which was not very optimal.” Despite the early complications, the rest of the day went by smoothly. Each team member arrived to their testing events on time and there weren’t any other issues with the team.
Overall, the team placed 24th out of 83 teams, finishing above rival schools such as South Pasadena and Poly. The team performed above expectations and eight students won medals: Kathy Jia, 12, Leo Feng, 11, Sebastian Liong, 12, Caitlin Chwang, 11, Allyson Wang, 11, Ian Chekk, 9, Surdish Randhawa, 11, and Adelynne Yang, 10. “As a team, I am really proud of how we did,” Team Captain Caitlin Chwang, 11, said. “We were originally planning to get around 35th place so it’s really nice seeing us meet our goal. While I definitely think we could have done better in some categories, I think it’s also important to consider that this was our first competition of the year and that we were severely underprepared compared to the other teams participating in the tournament.”
