Skyridge students win state science championship

The Skyridge Middle School Science Olympiad team made Camas history last month when it became the city’s first middle school team to win the state Science Olympiad championship. Now, the group of 16 middle-schoolers are headed to Nebraska to compete against some of the nation’s best STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students at the 2025 Science Olympiad National Tournament May 23-24 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “I’m excited to stay in the dorms,” said Skyridge Science Olympiad team member Daniel Liu. “And I’ve heard the guest speakers are really inspirational.” This year’s keynote speaker has not yet been announced, but the 2024 national Science Olympiad competition featured retired NASA astronaut and former Hudson’s Bay High School science teacher Dorothy “Dottie” Metcalf-Lindenburger. Daniel, 13, an eighth-grader at Skyridge, and his Science Olympiad teammates took first place in six events at placed in the top four in 18 out of 23 events at the state competition April 12 at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. The entire team — Team Aron, named after a Pokemon character — took first place at the state tournament. Team Aron beat two dozen Washington middle school teams, including two others from Camas: Skyridge’s Team Blissey and Liberty Middle School’s Team Black, which placed 13th and 15th in the state. Later this month, the Skyridge Team Aron members will compete against 60 other Science Olympiad teams, including Washington’s second-place middle school team from Evergreen Middle School in Redmond. “I’m looking forward to it,” Team Aron member Jamie Kim said. “It will be fun to stay at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the dorms and cool to experience college life.” Jamie and Daniel both plan to join the Camas High School Science Olympiad team next year and both said they dream of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after high school. Daniel hopes to go into computer programming, and Jamie is considering an engineering career. “When I was younger, I thought about (having a career in) math or baseball, but after being in Science Olympiad, now I’m considering engineering. It’s a lot of fun,” Jamie said. Jamie and Daniel joined the team for different reasons. Daniel said he was following in his older sibling’s footsteps.Jamie said he wanted to work on math challenges with friends. But both said being a part of the Science Olympiad competition, which provides standards-based STEM challenges to more than 6,600 teams across the nation, is helping them prepare for the world beyond high school. “It’s helped motivate me,” Daniel said, “and I’m constantly learning.” At the state competition, Daniel placed first in two of his individual challenges, but said he has tempered his expectations for the national stage. “I really don’t expect to win at that high level,” Daniel said, adding that he is simply excited to compete with some of the brightest middle school Science Olympiad teams in the country. That doesn’t mean that Daniel and the other Team Aron students aren’t immersing themselves in preparations for the national competition. While the team used to practice for an hour after school and meet up at Camas High School for a couple hours twice a week, Jamie said, they are now practicing most weekdays and meeting at the high school several times a week. The challenges some of the Camas students will face at the national event may be different than those they’ve already prepared for during the run-up to the state tournament. Daniel, for example, discovered that the national competition schedule would knock out two of his three events, so he is now cramming to learn about entomology and wind power. Luckily, he said, his experience with Science Olympiad has also taught him some new time-management skills, and he enjoys keeping busy. Both Daniel and Jamie credit the people who helped their team thrive this year, including more experienced Science Olympiad students from Camas High, the parent volunteers who have dedicated countless hours helping the students learn specialized engineering and other STEM skills, as well as the team’s coaches, Skyridge science teachers Kristin McEnry and Karen Olsen. Camas High School Science Olympiad coaches Matthew Chase and Bo Liebe also helped the team and will provide logistical support during the national tournament. Other members of the Skyridge team heading to Nebraska this week include Kevin Cai, Claire Chase, Nathaniel Ewe, Zixuan Huang, Kevin Jannsen, Amelia Le, Emmett Le, Klaire Liu, Seoyoon Shin, Thea Sosnowski, Andrew Song, Evan Vy, Aiden Wong and Eric Zhang.

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