Meads Mill Students Place First in Science Olympiad State Competition

- From a parent press release

On April 28, won first place at the Science Olympiad state competition held at Michigan State University.

The team is now invited to represent Michigan State at the Science Olympiad National Tournament hosted by the University of Central Florida in Orlando on May 18-19, 2012.

Cooperation and teamwork along with diligence and effort in studying is what led Meads Mill Middle School’s Science Olympiad team to the 2012 State victory. Last fall, Coach Diane Xu was graced with 63 middle school students interested in competing on this year’s team. Each member signed up for different events including but not limited to Bottle Rockets, Towers, Microbe Mission, and Mousetrap Vehicle. On a voluntary basis, parents led the students in concentrated learning and repeated trials of these individual events. Learn the entire list of Division B (middle school) events offered by going to
http://soinc.org/2012_div_b_events

Based on performance, determination and availability, the whole 63 was divided into two teams who then participated in area invitational events. With experience growing under their belts, the learning curve grew fast and furious. Before long the now fifteen student team went on to participate at regionals in March and took home the first place trophy.

From there it was onto State! Eighth grade team member, Allie Pierce comments, "After winning Regional's, we knew we could place higher than our 12th place finish at State last year, but I'm not sure any of us really believed we could move on to Nationals."

This is Xu’s second year as head coach of Science Olympiad at Meads Mill.
She, along with assistant coach, Lori Schafer, has taken the challenge of coaching to new heights. Xu and a handful of parent volunteers attended competitions to gain more knowledge and insight toward the benefit of the team. Thanks to these experiences, event coaches were able to see in what areas our team members could focus on greater challenges.

“A little bit of science, lots of work. That is Science Olympiad,” said Xu. “Teamwork makes Dream Work.”

With regard to the event called Mission Possible, where a reactive structure is built containing a string to pull a switch, turning on a motor, pulling a mass, releasing a spring, etc., Xu counters, “Who says Mission Impossible? We made it possible! Mission Possible is one difficult building event among 23 events
in Science Olympiad. Meads Mill won 2nd place at State in that event.” Regarding the Towers event, Diane’s comment was, “Days of planning; weeks of building; months of perfecting; seconds of smashing…”
(Division C) also competed at State level on Saturday. It is comforting to know there is another level of talented scientists waiting to welcome our middle schoolers. We encourage middle school students with an interest in science to look into joining the Science Olympiad next year. You can learn more about Science Olympiad at their home page http://soinc.org/

We are grateful to have Diane and all the parent coaches who have donated their time an energy into the success of our team. It is thanks to these and many Northville parents whose dedication allows our students the opportunity to continued success. In Diane’s words, “With a little more hard work, your creativity takes you to great heights.”