FBy Nicholas Plante ’18

For over 40 years, Science Olympiad has offered thousands of young scientists from all corners of the country the opportunity to perpetuate their scientific understanding through competition.  Time and time again, Chaminade High School has capitalized on this chance to develop students’ love for science, and on Saturday, January 9, the members of Science Olympiad  represented themselves well at the Columbia High School Invitational in Albany, New York.

After a four hour bus ride, the Junior Varsity Yellow and Varsity Red teams excitedly anticipated the challenges that they would face.   Led by coaches Bro. Benjamin Knapp, S.M. ’93, Mr. Joseph Amorizzo ’07, Mr. Pasquale Razzano, and Mr. Peter Sennert ’11, both squads showed significant improvement from their performances at the Islip Invitational this past December. The teams, each comprised of about fifteen students, did well in all of the 25 events held in this month’s Columbia Invitational.

The varsity team finished in 5th place of the 31 teams competing, and the JV team finished 10th.   First place medals were taken home by Anthony Brites ’16 and Liam Spielmann ’16 in Anatomy, Daniel Hepworth ’18 and Christopher Mercadante ’18 in Dynamic Planet, Zachary Toner ’16 and Nicholas Newton ’19 in Game On, Robert Sangirardi ’16 and Vincent Sciortino ’16 in Optics, and Thomas Graham ’16 and Joseph Graham ’17 in Robot Arm.

Daniel Hepworth, who earned first place after competing in only one former competition with the team, remarked that, “The whole team worked as hard as it could, the team’s efforts were clearly evident in the results.  We’re definitely looking forward to even more success!”

Nicholas Schleith ’16, the varsity team captain, also praised everyone’s performance.  He said that, “They did really well here considering the difficulty of the competition; however, the most important thing was that it provided us with more experience that we hope to build on as the regional competition nears.”

To add onto Nick’s final point, Chaminade’s Science Olympiad squad will be practicing rigorously over the next few weeks.  The group will partake in the Yale Invitational on Saturday, January 30 and, just one week later, compete in Regionals, which will determine the group’s ability to compete in other competitions over the remainder of the year.

Congratulations to all those who participated in the Columbia Invitational!