Our school’s Science Team competed in their first competition of the season, the USC Invitational. The invitational, like its name suggests, was held at the USC campus and had over 150 teams competing, 81 of which were in the high school division.
The USC invitational is southern California’s largest Science Olympiad invitational and is a direct successor to BirdSO, a competition the team has competed in since COVID. Our Science Team A finished 21st out of 81 teams, their highest place in the invitational since its inception. Their Team B finished 48th. While the team’s overall placement exceeded their expected placement of 25th, there were numerous exceptional performances that spearheaded Team A’s placements. Among these students include Captains Surdish Randhawa, 12, and Caitlin Chwang, 12, who both secured top 3 finishes in one of their events as well as Spring Sun, 10, Emily Kim, 10, Huahua Yang, 11, Adelynne Yang, 11, and Leo Feng, 12, whom all medaled in at least one of their events. “Although there was definitely room for improvement in certain areas, we surpassed our goal of placing around 25th, which is incredibly impressive for us overall. Especially given this was our first competition of the year, and a lot of us were underprepared both in materials and experience, it’s really exciting to see how much we’ve already achieved,” Vice Captain Randhawa said.
While the students studied hard for their events, most of the fun in the competition came from spending time with their friends and just exploring the USC campus. Students were given access to faculty run tours of much of USC’s groundbreaking technology including their quantum computing lab and optics spintronics lab. Students were also given the opportunity to explore student life at USC with the team partaking in team bonding activities at the USC village. I’m really proud about how we did as a team. “For me, the tournament was a very rewarding experience. Competing in my events allowed me to work on refining and expanding what I know alongside teammates, which was a lot of fun. Additionally, I got to wander USC with friends and discover random places like a Chapel of Silence together which made it all the more enjoyable,” Randhawa continued.
