NCS Science Olympiad Meet Draws a Crowd

National Cathedral School's sixth annual Science Olympiad tournament was the largest one yet, with 63 teams and more than 900 students taking part on Saturday, Dec. 7.

 

This meet served as the season's first for many of the schools, allowing competitors to test their fall preparations and engineering calculations. Sixty students represented NCS on four teams, three from the Upper School and one from the Middle School. Each student typically competes in multiple events.

 

The 23 events this year include standbys such as Astronomy and Forensics, as well as new ones such as Gravity Vehicle and Protein Modeling.

 

The top five finishers in each event were awarded medals. Avery Borgmann '20 took home three medals, while Miranda Giambi '20 and Anvi Kalyana '23 won two each. Gold-medal winners were Borgmann, Giambi, Madeleine Drefke '21, Julia Poggi '21, Ceylin Erkan '23, and Kalyana.

 

Science Olympiad embodies many elements in the 2018-2023 Strategic Plan, including “increasing opportunities for students to gain skills, apply knowledge, and seek solutions in the evolving digital world,” and “providing experiences beyond classroom instruction that allow for exploration and lead to improved self-knowledge.”

 

A highlight of Saturday's tournament was the keynote address from Dr. Regina M. Caputo. She works at the Goddard Space Flight Center, where she is a member of the NASA Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope team, studying dark-matter searches and future gamma-ray instruments. We were pleased to welcome her to NCS.

 

The Washington Post also covered the tournament and published its report in Sunday's newspaper.