Community Middle School took top honors at the National Science Olympiad competition at Wichita State University on Saturday, May 19, competing against 61 other middle school teams from all over the country. The Community Olympians won medals in 9 of 24 events, including three gold medals. The 20 students, their coaches, and their parents worked together from late October to May to prepare for competition.
“This is equivalent to a local team winning the Little League World Championship,” notes Hemant Marathe, president of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education. “The preparation starts in early October with a test and the kids work two to four hours every day (and many more on weekends) from then until last week.” Marathe’s daughter, Payal, is a member of the team.
The students include Frederick Huang, Jennifer Ibanez, Varnika Atmakuri, Sam Goldfinger, Sanjana Manikandan, Spencer Paolombit, Aneesha Raghunathan, Renuka Reddy, Rithwik Vedati, Mrinalini Basu, Gita Gnanadesikan, Vidya Nandapurkar, Rohit Reddy, Aparna Shankar, Alex Ameri, Josh Bocarsly, Mohit Hajarnis, Daniel Liu, and Elliot Xu.
The coaches include Arthur Downs, Shir Aharon, Greg Doidge, Tomo Tamura, Katharine Malec, Elyse Goldfinger, Amalia Gnanadesikan, Anand Gnanadesikan, Nagendra Vedati, David Parris, Morton Levine, Virginia Baner, and Denise Weber.
“At a time when public education is being picked on by the public and politicians; when there is big concern about math and science education in this country; it is important to show the public what is getting for its tax dollars,” Marathe writes. “Our district has a team that has won the national championship as a team twice in the last three years.”
