Saline Science Olympiad Team Highlighted After Record Performance

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The Saline High School Science Olympiad team placed third in the state and narrowly missed an invitation to the National Championship.

The program's success - from the elementary school up through the high school - was highlighted at Tuesday's Board of Education meeting.

Science Olympiad competitions are like "academic track meets," according to the program's official website. Teams compete in a variety of events around genetics, earth sciences, physics, geology, mechanical engineering and technology.

Saline High School's team has competed in the state championship for 12 straight years and has 11 top 10 finishes. This year, with more than 200 programs, the Saline team finished third in the state - the highest finish ever for the program.

The team is coached by Nath Akella, an engineer with Ford Motor Co., and Don Winsor, an electric engineer at the University of Michigan's Computer Science Department. Alumni Jason Landini also helped coach.

But Akella said the students in the program deserve the credit.

"In all honesty, they worked really hard without me and I kind of was all along for the ride. This journey was really amazing," Akella said.

Last spring, as the pandemic struck, the students decided on three ideas to help the community. They collected and donated PPE to Saline Area Social Service, did Zoom calls with elderly residents who were locked away from families, and conducted Zoom lessons with younger students.

Around last May, the group started planning for the 2020-21 season. Akella's said the team's success this year was a reflection of the work the team did.

"They started in May before the school year even ended last year, met over the summer and made a list of everything that we needed to do. And then we got right to it," Akella said. "Their accomplishment is just epic. I'm so incredibly proud of them." 

Akella said the team finished just a few points behind the top two teams in Michigan - who are also top 10 teams in the state. The team also finished 39th out of the top 200 teams in the nation competing in the MIT tournament, 20th at UPenn, 13th at Harvard-Brown, 15th at Carnegie-Mellon, third at Michigan and they were the champions at Northview.

Akella estimated the team is ranked 40th out of 8000 teams in the country.

This year's varsity team was led by captains Daniel Kang, Eli Ensfield, and Josie Cayen. Also competing with the varsity team were CJ Figueras, Deric Daniel, Brian Zhao, Justin Schabel, Sahil Thumma, Jason Hu, Jason Chen, Josie Sullivan, Joseph Chen, Ryan Fischer, Ishaan Mendriratta, and Mason Miller. 

There were many other competitors, including Justin Mishina, Sreyan Bandyopadhyay, Christian Manohar, Pradiddhi Shivakumaran, Gabe Cueto, Amod Talekar, Ryan Landini, Kira Saproski, Isabel Whalen, Geoff Daniel, Suhani Dalela, Emily Marciszewski, Sam Ensfield, Ayush Reddy, Riley Spencer, Brian Kang, Nadia Kreuzwieser, Erin Foskos, Mason Dyksterhouse, Priya Samaroo, Sofia Radcliff, Abigail Rohde, Avery Nealis, Alex Liu, Meredith Nestor and Shinjan Bandyopadhyay.

The team has grown from 16 students. when Akella arrived, to 43 students today. And Akella expects that number to grow with all of the youngsters involved.

The Board of Education also heard from Lisa Spencer, the head coach of the middle school Science Olympiad team. Spencer talked about a program that begins in elementary school in the Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad. The Saline team met virtually once or twice a week to discuss topics, participate in student-led activities and play online science games.

Heritage School has a Science Olympiad team that now includes second and third-grade students.

The Saline Middle School Science Olympiad team participates in the national program, competing in 23 different events. The teams practice Thursdays and Saturdays from October through April. This year, Saline placed 12th out of 50 teams competing in the Michigan Science Olympiad Tournament held May 1.

"This was a fantastic team effort and I am extremely proud of all of our Olympians," said Spencer.

Earning medals in the State competition include:

  • Codebusters 1st place - Andrew Irgang, Julia Rohde, Lorien Sieh
  • Codebusters 2nd place - Oren Dhamrat, Ella Kniffin, Adrian Sieh
  • Density Lab 4th place - Andrew Irgang and Adrian Sieh
  • Mission Possible 4th place - Ethan Hornberger and Andrew Irgang
  • Circuit Lab 6th place - Andrew Irgang and Vedulasre Sankari
  • Experimental Design 6th place - Neah Bloch and Alice Jiang
  • Crime Busters 7th place - Mindy Collis and Ethan Hornberger
  • Reach for the Stars 7th place - Oren Dhamrat and Maybelle Hart

Other Top 20 Finishes:

  • Game On 10th place - Neah Bloch and Vedualsre Sankari
  • Disease Detectives 11th place - Mindy Collis and Ethan Hornberger
  • Dynamic Planet 13th place - Neah Bloch and Vedulasre Sankari
  • Food Science 13th place - Alice Jiang and Rylie Torzewski
  • Digital Structures 15th place - Oren Dhamrat
  • Machines 15th place - Maybelle Hart and Prad Shivakumaran
  • Helicopter 16th place - Vedulasre Sankari
  • Fossils 17th place - Ella Kniffin and Rylie Torzewski
  • Water Quality 18th place - Neah Bloch and Owen Bloch

Please visit https://salinemiddlescioly.weebly.com/ and https://www.soinc.org/ for more information.

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