HomeBy Deanna Irvin
As the Science Olympiad team continues to grow, their success continues to increase. Grand County High School’s Science Olympiad team is now in its fifth year. This year, however, was different with coaches Ms. Laura Reed and Ms. Mary Walker-Irvin believing the team to be the most prepared they have ever been. Their hard work and preparation clearly showed.
At the regional competition at Snow College in Ephraim, the team placed third overall as well as taking home the sportsmanship award. Grand also had a great individual showing, with Nat Smith and Jacob Francis placing first in Technical Problem Solving and Sarah Quigley and Deanna Irvin placing first in Remote Sensing. Placing second in their other events were Nat Smith, Deanna Irvin, Jasmine Swink, Josh LaRance, Chris Taysom, River Murdock, Cody Jones, Nikysha Harmison, Annie Heywood, and Jacob Hardin. Taking third place in their other events were Cody Jones, River Murdock, Sarah Quigley, and Nikysha Harmison. Most competitors from Grand competed in two events.
Having a little over a month to keep learning and practicing for their events, the team headed to the state competition on April 13 at the University of Utah. Overall, Grand County placed near the middle, at 16th place out of 33 teams. Worth noting is that this competition is not separated into 1A-5A competitions, but rather every school against every other school.
The GCHS team faced 5A schools from the Salt Lake area as well as private and charter schools, some of which have a special emphasis on science. All of that taken into account, Grand has been holding their own and more.
In most individual events, GCHS students scored around the middle. Some notable exceptions were Rebecca Minor and Annie Heywood, who placed sixth in Rocks and Minerals; and Nat Smith and Alex Sorensen, who placed sixth in Chemistry Lab. Nat Smith, Jacob Francis, and Cody Jones also placed eighth in Experimental Design, and Nat Smith and Jacob Francis placed ninth in Technical Problem Solving, and Jasmine Swink and Deanna Irvin placed 10th in Remote Sensing.
“I think we’ve done fairly well in most of our events,” Walker-Irvin said. “The team has really grown too. We used to have a hard time even getting 10 people to stick with it through state, but this year we easily took 13 kids. It was especially great to have so many freshmen on our team to keep the program going. We obviously hope to have even more next year. We can only keep improving.”