Science Olympiad Team 2 placed 19th overall out of 91 teams at the annual University of Southern California (USC) Science Olympiad Invitational, Jan. 17. Their best placements were third in Bungee Drop and seventh in Hovercraft from Team 2, and eighth in Forensics from Team 3.
Science Olympiad includes three types of events: study events, lab events, and build events. Students choose a few out of the 23 events to compete in. The USC Invitational was the second of five invitationals this year for Westview, preparing the teams for the upcoming regional tournament at USD in February.
The USC Invitational is the largest in-person Science Olympiad invitational in the nation, and was the first in-person invitational for Westview this year. Sanchay Koppa (11), the vice president of Operations and the student coach in several events, said that this invitational was a rude awakening to the progress his team still needed to make.
“This invitational was the first in-person invitational and the first build invitational,” Koppa said. “What that means is that this is the first time we are testing out our builds, meaning that either our design was on point with the objective of the event or it was off, leading to designs being reworked and modifications needing to be made. It is also a special invitational because it foreshadows the testing environment for the Science Olympiad Nationals, since it is also held at USC.”
Science Olympiad President Kaden Chang (12) participated in Bungee Drop with his partner Adrienne He (9) for Team 2, which is an event where participants are given a weighted bottle to attach to an elastic cord and drop from a given height. The purpose is to minimize the distance between the bottle’s initial landing height and the ground, while accounting for cord elasticity, the surprise bottle weight, and the dropping height. Chang and He managed to adjust their cord to a specific length to get the bottle only two centimeters off the ground, earning third place for the event.
“Bungee Drop stood out because of the increased height difference,” Chang said. “At regionals and states, the max [possible height] is around five meters. But at National level rules which are used at USC, testing and calibrating data going from five to eight meters becomes much more difficult. After all, it’s very hard to find a place high enough to measure and account for these differences. In competition, the heights we were given ended up being around 5.8 meters and 6.6 meters which is a lot higher than you think.”
Koppa participated in four of the six events held, and placed seventh in one: Hovercraft. Koppa said that the team faced frustrating technical difficulties during Robot Tour, which allowed them to account for and prepare better, and to learn from their mistakes.
“Over the [past] couple of months, I have been hosting meetings at my house to work on our Robot Tour build,” Koppa said. “Specifically on the day of the competition, I stayed up working on it for about five hours, and I ended up getting about 15 minutes of sleep. I thought I developed a sufficient code that would work, but at competition, a gearbox from the motor’s external gear slipped, and caused it to not work at all. I was very upset and really frustrated because I spent so much time and ended up getting minimal sleep for this event. I think there are a couple of lessons to be learned here: you can work as hard as possible, but sometimes it still won’t be enough. But at the same time, there is a lesson of understanding that some things are out of your reach, and to not let those external factors define you. It’s not about how it went wrong, but rather about how you react to it and how you rise from that challenge.”
Even though the team faced several adversities, Koppa said that celebrating victories, however small or large they may be, is as important as reflecting and assessing mistakes.
“My general takeaway is that we have a lot to improve on,” Koppa said. “After seeing the results and hearing from my peers, there were just some really unfortunate circumstances which means that we can definitely do better in the future. USC Invitational was definitely beneficial for our team and for myself because it really showed the brutal reality of your knowledge or your build. That truth knocks you down, but whether you are out of the fight is up to you. You get out how much you put [in] it.”
