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For the past four years, the Mountain View High School Science Olympiad club has come tantalizingly close to competing nationally, only to finish second each time to a rival school — until now.
Mountain View High School’s team will be competing in this year’s Science Olympiad National Tournament, hosted virtually by Arizona State University on May 22. This will be the first trip to the national competition for the Mountain View High team, which formed in 2010.
Tony Xin, a senior and co-president of Mountain View High School’s team joined the group when he was a freshman. For most of his high school career, his team placed second at the crucial state competition that determines which school will go on to the national tournament.
“You can probably imagine how heart-wrenching it is to get second at states, because you’re this close,” Xin said.
With its triumph at the state competition this year, the Mountain View High team will represent northern California at the Science Olympiad National Tournament, facing off against 120 teams from across the country.
“For me, I’ve been putting in all this work since freshman year,” Xin said. “And all of us have been putting in so much work since the beginning of this year.”
The Science Olympiad is a test of a club’s breadth of knowledge in any STEM-related subject, ranging from anatomy to technology. The Olympiad is structured much like a track meet: whichever school gets the most first-place prizes among roughly two dozen competitive events wins the tournament.
Each of the Olympiad’s competitive events is a test on a specific subject that falls under one of five different categories: Life, Personal & Social Science, Earth & Space Science, Physical Science & Chemistry, Technology & Engineering Design and Inquiry & Nature of Science.
In this year’s state tournament, for example, Xin and teammate Matthew Lin won first prize in the Earth & Space Science category’s fossils event. Xin and Lin worked together to complete a timed test that asked a wide range of questions in paleontology. Teams are allowed to compile a binder of information for each event they’re competing in — almost like a cheat sheet — but rarely will it help them answer all the questions on the test correctly.
“It’s not like a typical biology test that you would take where it’s like: learn this topic and you can get a 100%,” Xin said. “In Science Olympiad, it’s very rare to get a 100%.”
Team members may study all year long on a certain subject in the hopes of beating rival schools’ scores. According to Xin, his team spends, at minimum, 24 hours each week coordinating with each other in meetings, taking practice tests or studying — that’s in addition to the studying they have to do for their regular school work.
“The reward of doing well on a test, getting that medal and then feeling the weight of the medal as you walk up to the podium … makes all the studying and taking tests worth it, ” Xin said.
For Xin, though, the Science Olympiad is also a test of teamwork — something he said has become a strength for the Mountain View club, and credits for its success in the state tournament, even in the midst of a pandemic, when meetings had to be held over Zoom.
“We started working in the summer of 2020,” Xin said. “We just started focusing before a lot of other teams and we started using (messaging platform) Slack for communication. … Previously, our team wasn’t really as connected as it is right now.”
Xin said that, as a student-run group, his team was able to adapt more easily to the pandemic, compared to other schools where teachers or staff are more hands-on in running the team. While Mountain View’s team has a teacher advisor like most high school clubs, Xin said the teacher is there just to provide a room for team meetings.
Without having staff administrators looking over the team’s shoulder, Xin felt that their student-run club had greater flexibility and were quicker to adapt to the online format.
Though the national tournament is a huge milestone for Mountain View High’s team, it’s far from the largest competition it has competed in. This past February, Mountain View High also received first place at the Golden Gate Invitational, which attracts about 150 teams from around the nation, including 13-time national champions Troy High School, a school based in Fullerton. This year, Mountain View High bested Troy High. The two schools will be competing again at nationals.
Most of the fanfare that comes with winning an invitational or the state competition is gone due to the pandemic. A few weeks ago, Xin and his teammates gathered at his house, in the garage, staring at a monitor as they anxiously awaited the announcement. It takes some of the gratification out of winning, Xin admits. But his team was no less excited when they got news of their win.
“You’re hearing your name on a device, playing on your computer, so it’s much, much more rewarding in person,” he said. “But the fact that we are getting these first-place prizes is still satisfying.”
