High School South’s Science Olympiad team won third place at the National Tournament — the highest honor ever achieved by South in this competition. The 15 team members are Alexander Clifton, Aniruddh Shivram, Ashwin Amurthur, Charles Zhou, Harrison Liew, Johnathan Kuan, Jonathan Ting, Kushal Gandhi, Ming-Ming Tran, Nikita Singh, Peter Ku, Rebecca Shi, Sarath Jaladi, Satyajeet Pal, and Udit Gupta. The five alternates that went to the national competition were Ankita Gore, Apoorva Shah, Maymur Baig, Shaurya Luthra, and Sophia Liu. The High School South coach is physics teacher Brendan Field.
The team received a gold medal in dynamic planet (Harrison Liew and Satyajeet Pal); four silver medals in microbe mission (Rebecca Shi and Nikita Singh), ornithology (Rebecca Shi and Jonathan Ting), protein modeling (Rebecca Shi, Nikita Singh, and Charles Zhou), and sumo bots (Sarath Jaladi and Johnathan Kuan); a bronze medal in chemistry lab (Jonathan Ting and Ming-Ming Tran); a fourth place medal in helicopters (Sarath Jaladi and Johnathan Kuan); a fifth place medal in mission possible (Udit Gupta,Sarath Jaladi, and Charles Zhou); and two sixth place medals in ecology (Peter Ku and Ming-Ming Tran) and mousetrap vehicle (Johnathan Kuan and Harrison Liew). In addition, the team received a gold medal in materials science (Ankita Gore and Sophia Liu), a trial event.
Community Middle School’s Science Olympiad team earned a 14th place finish on the national level. There are more than 6,000 active Science Olympiad teams in the United States, and only 60 are invited to participate at the national level. For the 10th year in a row, Community Middle School sent a team of 15 competitors, six alternates, and other student participants, as well as parents and coaches, to the National Science Olympiad Tournament.
The 23 students on the team include Avinash Subramanian, Brice Huang, David Xin, Edison Lee, Kathryn Khaw, Lyric Gupta, Matt Zang, Maunika Atmakuri, Rohan Agarwal, Shannon Sheu, Shreya Marathe, Sreeja Kondeti, Sundar Solai, Varun Subbiah, Vincent Wu, James Zou, Louis Wang, Mathew Duffy, Mathew Pan, Sanchaya Satish, Shruthi Marathe, Benjamin Yang, and Vrinda Gupta.
In addition to the team honor, the top medal winners include the following students. Anatomy, second place (Lyric Gupta and Sreeja Kondeti); disease detectives, third place (Rohan Agrawal and Lyric Gupta); ecology, first place (Edison Lee and David Xin); fossils, sixth place (Avinash Subramanian and Shannon Sheu); meteorology, sixth place (Rohan Agrawal and Matt Zang); road scholar, fifth place (Brice Huang and Varun Subbiah): shock value, first place (Brice Huang and Varum Subbiah); solar system, fourth place (Avinash Subramanian and Rohan Agrawal; and write stuff capacitor, third place (Louis Wang and Shruti Marathe).
Social studies teacher Kyle Schimpf serves as the team’s head coach, and Arthur Downs, Eileen Chubik-Kwis, and Pam Twiggs are assistant coaches.
