JC Middle School Students Score Well at the State Science Olympiad Tournament

Fifteen Johnson Creek Middle School students placed 21st at the State Science Olympiad competition held at UW-Oshkosh out of 35 teams. The highest scoring pair was Tyler Vaughn and Natalie Ortega, who earned 2nd place medals for their thoroughness in a mock crime scene analysis. This year’s team is young with no returning freshman, only 2 eighth graders, ten seventh graders and three sixth graders.  Coach Fritzi Heckel said, “These students had a lot of fun after school practicing and helping each other problem solve and learn the material. I see so much promise in these individuals and it makes me proud to represent Johnson Creek with them.”

Anna Yezzi and Natalie Ortega learned all they could about our solar system and placed 9th, while Nick Hoffmann and Tyler Vaughn took 10th in "Can’t Judge a Powder" where they had to gather evidence to determine what the mystery substance could be. Tyler Vaughn was the only one who competed in all six time slots and kept going strong from 7:45am to 3:00pm. There were 7 pairs of students that scored in the top half of the competition. Ralph Hombsch and Reed Garsky engineered an air trajectory machine that flung a ping pong ball to a precise target by dropping weights on an air pump. They made it to 16th place. Alex Garza and Justin Swanson placed 12th in "Dynamic Planet," an ecology based event, while Alex Bowman and Tyler Vaughn earned 17th place for "Crave the Wave" which focused on sound and light wave qualities.

Tyler Naatz and Alan Thomas felt the heat when their robot stopped working two days before the competition. Thanks to community member Randy Roehl and his team of engineers for figuring out how to get it working again. Tyler stayed late that night to practice working the controls and record new trial data.  It was all worth it for their 13th place finish.

The rest of the hard working team consisted of Evie Mueller, Lily Webster, Alex Garza, Caitlin Burns, and Brooke Joseph; who faced some tough competition. The team is very excited to learn what the new events will be for next year.  

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