Students Advance to State Level in Science Olympiad Competition

In the regional competition on Saturday, January 27, Joe Xie and Ben Chen won a 1st place medal in the Hovercraft event as well as a 6th place medal in Towers. Max Benzian, Noah Tinsley, Jonathan Scholl, Nathan Stevenson, and Matthew McCullough had strong showings in the Helicopters, Mousetrap Vehicle, and Thermodynamics events. Nineteen high school teams from ten high schools in the region met at local Charlottesville High School to compete in the Virginia Science Olympiad Regional Tournament. Tandem's Upper School team performed well enough to advance to the state-level tournament with a final overall place of 6th, based on the performance of each school's top performing team. Joe Xie and Ben Chen won a 1st place medal in the Hovercraft event as well as a 6th place medal in the Towers event. Max Benzian, Noah Tinsley, Jonathan Scholl, Nathan Stevenson, and Matthew McCullough had strong showings in the Helicopters, Mousetrap Vehicle, and Thermodynamics events but came up just short of earning a medal. 
In the high school competition, three large schools from Northern Virginia (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, Fairfax High School, & Oakton High School) each fielded three teams. This made earning medals quite a challenge, as one school can win multiple medals in a single event and most medals were won by teams from Thomas Jefferson or Fairfax. 

Our Middle School team won 6th place medals in Mystery Architecture (George Vavrik & Lilly Chinn), Road Scholar (Charlie Kalnite & Solly Goluboff-Schragger), and Write It/Do It (George Vavrik & Solly Goluboff-Schragger). The team did not qualify for the state tournament but as they only had half the number of students needed for a full team and competed in only half of the total events, this was expected. 

The Upper School team will take on the state tournament, to be held at the University of Virginia, on April 14. We can't wait to see what they accomplish. Congratulations to Tandem's young scientists and engineers!
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Tandem Friends School is a co-ed Quaker day school for grades 5-12 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
 
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