On Saturday, April 21, Fossil Ridge High School’s Science Olympiad team travelled to Cherry Creek High School in Denver for the Colorado Science Olympiad State competition. In the competition, Fossil’s Team #1 won first overall with 51 points, placing first in 11 events, second in four events, and third in two events. This success qualifies the team for the National Competition on May 18-19 at Colorado State University.

For Kyle Schmer, a senior competitor on Team #1, the victory is appreciated, but not unexpected. “If we didn’t go to Nationals, we would not have have been happy,” Schmer stated. Fossil has a record of consistently placing high at the state level and continuing to nationals- because of this, the team’s expectations and hopes are high. “I think we’re happy, but it’s like ‘okay, now we have to move on to Nationals,’” Schmer reflected, “and this was the goal.”

On Team #1 at Fossil, the repeated success is not simply achieved by the team overall; much of the roster has remained unchanged between years. For Schmer, this year does not mark his first trip to Nationals. “We’ve gone to Nationals the last four years. This will be my third year going,” he explained. According to Schmer, this consistency contributes to the team’s success. “We were able to keep a lot of the same people from last year, so we had a really strong team.” However, the constancy and familiarity of the team also has looming drawbacks for next year, as many members will be graduating. “We had the maximum number of seniors on the team this year. You can only have seven, and we have all seven, so we’ll be losing seven people off Team #1. It’ll be interesting,” Schmer commented. “We’ll be losing a lot of people in building events, so we’ll have to fill those gaps. Hopefully they’ll do well.” However, those that remain on Team #1 have strong prospects themselves. “All the juniors will be solid. There’s a lot of juniors in academic events,” Schmer added.

As for the success of individual events, the results were mixed but strong overall. For Schmer, the highlight of the day was Mousetrap Vehicle. In this event, competitors use a mousetrap to build a vehicle that pushes a cup three metres in one direction before returning five to seven metres and stopping at a point. “We were only a centimeter off the point, which was really good. We basically couldn’t improve,” Schmer explained enthusiastically. “The second run was really easy. We knew we had the win.”

To view the complete results of the Science Olympiad Colorado State competition, click here.