Science Olympiad 1998
An essay by Roxanne Rogers

1998 Science Olympiad was one of the quickest competitions I've ever been in. A couple of other high school students and I went down to the jr. high for a science club meeting. Since there were only three of us, we couldn't form a team by ourselves. One of the first things our coach, Mrs. A. Kaip, told us was that we only had 2 WEEKS to study and build the events for regionals! This freaked me out--I thought it would be impossible to succeed. We studied and worked and built for almost every day for those two weeks. It was very hard and very time consuming, but no pain, no gain. Some of the students worked until late evening a few nights with our other coach, Mr. Mark Brucker, before competition day. The day of the competition I, along with most of the members of the science club, were feeling a mixture of excitment, anticipation, and maybe a little bit of nervousness in some of the rookies. The morning couldn't go by fast enough. By 11:45, the other high school members and I were jumping out of our seats to get ready for the charter bus to come from the Jr. high and pick us up. The hour and forty-five minute road trip to Dickinson was fun because we were surrounded by our friends and goofing off. We ate at McDonalds, then bussed up to the Dickinson State University Campus. We were a bit late as I recall, but most of us made it to our first events on time (I'm not mentioning any names, Alex!!!). It was our first acual Science Olympiad competition for most of us, since we had alot of new seventh graders and other new members. Also, we had more than 15 members last year so about 5 people didn't get to compete. We had around 30 people this year, so we formed two teams, Black and White (school colors). Overall, most people felt good and confident with their events by the time the acual competiton part was done. We went up to the gym for the awards ceremony and goofed off some more until it started. Some people knew what they placed in their events so we already knew that we won gold in something (White team-Bottle Rocket). Once the awards started we were all running up to the front because they kept calling our teams. We won medal after medal, but we still weren't sure if we would make it to the State Olympiad competition. Some other people and I had a conversation right before they announced the overall placing--who would go to state. We decided that maybe one team would get third and the other not place. I can hardly describe the feeling I get at award ceremonies where success is possible and likely. You get really excited and you're sitting on the edge of your seat. You get a little shakey and you can't stop smiling. Most of your attention is focused on the announcer. The other part is on your friends, who are also as excited as you. We were doing that right then and there. The announcer then started to read the results of out hard work. I wasn't paying as much attention as I think I should have, because she read, "Third place: Mandan, Team White." I got up and started to really cheer, but then I realized that I was on the Black team. So I sat back down, really confused because we decided that it wasn't supposed to end like this, we thought only one team would make it. The Black team was dubbed as the "All-Stars" because we were older and more expirienced. We were supposed to place, not white. But then she announced the next one, "Second Place: Mandan, Team Black." Then we started screaming. That competition, although not my most successful, was one of my favorite because we proved we could pull through and still make it to State Science Olympiad against the odds. Whenever I think I can do something or make a deadline, I'll look back to this competition and do it well.