The Science Olympiad team won first place in the high school division at the regional tournament held at Grand Valley State University last Saturday. They had the low score of 75 points.

Both of the middle schools and high school will be advancing on to the Michigan Science Olympiad tournament held at Michigan State University on Saturday, April 26 with the rest of the top six teams from this region.

“I would expect that we would see similar results again [at state],” chemistry teacher, and head coach Michael Reed said. “It gets tough. The competition becomes more difficult as we go up in the levels.”

The high school placed first in eight events; Astronomy, Boomilever, Compound Machines, Disease Detectives, GeoLogic Mapping, MagLev, Materials Science and Mission Possible. They medaled in all but three events.

“I can’t say that we’re perfect,” Reed said. “Nobody’s perfect. We’re just going to try to continue learning and improving our devices all around and hopefully see improvement in all areas.”

The team plans on fine-tuning their skills and devices for the upcoming state tournament. The levels become harder and the requirements are greater. They will also be competing against more schools, 48 at state compared to the 24 at regionals.

“It becomes more specific, more precise,” Reed said. “They have to be better prepared to work with those conditions.”

To continue on to nationals, the team must place first or second at state.There’s more pressure to do well at the upcoming tournament. The students have to dedicate a lot of time to studying and staying after school to practice.

“Nothing ever goes perfectly,” Reed said. “But the students need to realize that it doesn’t have to be perfect; just do your best and when we do our best, it’s usually better than everyone else.”

Score board: How the team did

Here’s a look at how the team scored compared to their competition. The scores are calculated by adding up the placements in all of the events. The lowest score wins.

1st Place: Grand Haven High School – 75 points

2nd Place: Grand Rapids Christian High School – 100 points

3rd Place: Plymouth Christian High School – 132 points

4th Place: West Ottawa High School – 144 points

5th Place: Forest Hills Central High School – 158 points

6th Place: Grandville High School – 172 points