A total of 20 teams from 15 county high schools competed on Saturday, March 4 at the 2017 Stanislaus County Regional Science Olympiad and Oakdale was among those rising to the top. Oakdale High School Gold Team came home Division C Champions. The OHS Gold Team will now advance to the Northern California (NorCal) Science Olympiad event scheduled for Saturday, April 1 at CSU Stanislaus.
Medals were awarded to the top five in each of 23 events. Each event is taken on by two (experimental design is three) students working together.
The Gold team had 13 members, earning a total of seven event medals.
OHS teacher and team advisor Cameron Nickerson shared his pleasure and pride with the team’s overall outcome.
“They put in plenty of hard work this year,” Nickerson said. “This was actually our third competition. We went to two invitational tournaments earlier in the year.
“Our tiny red team, three members, entered eight events, and of those got six top 10 finishes including one medal,” he continued.
Nickerson noted the teams are comprised of students that are really into science and engineering.
“They work hard to be good,” he said.
Many of the team members have logged plenty of hours, as they have been at it since the first semester.
“We even took a medal at our first invitational,” Nickerson stated. “That was our only invitational medal, but we learned a lot at each tournament.”
The teacher/coach shared that the knowledge gained from the past tournaments aided the students in the Saturday event.
“It was a tight tournament,” he stated, “and the top four teams, those of us advancing to the NorCal State event, were only separated by 12 points. We are really looking forward to going on to the NorCal competition.”
In addition to the Division C First Place for OHS, awards were given in the following areas.
Oakdale Gold Team:
Astronomy, First Place; Chemistry Lab, Fifth Place; Disease Detectives, Fourth Place; Dynamic Planet, Third Place; Forensics, First Place; Helicopters, First Place; Hovercraft, Fifth Place; Hydrogeology, First Place; Invasive Species, First Place; Optics, Third Place; Robot Arm, First Place; Rocks and Minerals, Second Place; Towers, Fourth Place; Wind Power, First Place and Write It/Do It, Second Place.
Oakdale Red Team:
Robot Arm, Fifth Place
Oakdale Charter:
Wind Power, Third Place.
“Our success though does not come without investment of both time and money,” Nickerson summarized. “I would like to publicly send a thank you to those that financially supported us. The OHS School Site Council had given us generous funding, and Academic Boosters has been outstanding in both their financial support and encouragement. We also receive some funding, including breaks on regional competition prices and a fully funded registration for the State competition from Stanislaus County Education Foundation.”
