LMSD dominated the Science Olympiad regional championships at Penn State Abington, with all five schools securing top placements. Harriton and LM won first and second place in Division C, respectively, while Bala Cynwyd Middle School triumphed as reigning champions of Division B with Black Rock Middle School a close second, and Welsh Valley placed in the top ten.
These high placements were the result of the students’ consistent effort since the beginning of the season. LM students even began preparing before the school year, led by captains Hugo Sanchez ’25, Jennifer Yang ’25, Joy Rao ’25, Emily Wang ’26, and Seiji Sako ’26. Since early October, the club has held multiple weekly meetings, where students tirelessly worked to master challenging topics, ace practice tests, and complete intricate builds, forging a strong team bond in preparation for invitationals.
Building up to regionals, LM Science Olympiad attended several invitationals against nationally competitive schools. From November to February, they attended competitions at Cornell, Conestoga, Penn State, UPenn, and Princeton. Before each competition, meetings saw an influx of students working tirelessly to take tests with partners, perfect cheat sheets, and add the finishing touches to their builds. Friday meetings were often held at members’ houses, promoting a tight-knit and diligent team culture and leading to success. The invitational season came to an end with LM taking home first place at the Princeton Invitational, a testament to the steady and dedicated teamwork of every member. A competitor on the stacked team, Julia Carreon-Sanchez ’27, remarked, “[Science Olympiad] is a pretty close club. We all kind of motivate each other and encourage each other to do better. Even if somebody doesn’t carry their weight, other people’s scores can make up for it.”
Preparation for regionals was even more rigorous, as partners were set for each event, and students could be seen taking tests daily, logging hours both in meetings and outside of school. Carreon-Sanchez, a competitor in the event Forensics, detailed her preparation: “Nothing better than pretending that you’re already in competition, putting that stress on yourself and putting pencil to paper. Taking notes is good, but you actually internalize it when you put in the work and do it in real life.” Competitors in build events could be seen after school in stairwells and the upper atrium, calibrating their builds to hit targets to hit targets precisely. Peilin Chen ’27, the event leader of Air Trajectory, a build event in which a ping pong launcher hits targets meters away, talked about the struggles with calibration: “Air trajectory is a particularly difficult event because it is precision based, which means a small mistake while setting it up or launching the ball can result in the ball landing a difference of a meter or more. We came across a lot of problems at the beginning of the year with accuracy… It was a lot of trial and error, and right now we are working everyday to calibrate in time for states.” When the day of competition came, the hundreds of hours of work paid off, with members winning seven gold medals, seven silver medals, two bronze medals, and more.
LM narrowly missed qualifying for nationals last year, losing out to Cumberland Valley High School in a tough battle for second place. LM has rigorously prepared for states, which happened on April 26 at Penn State Altoona. At the time of writing it is impossible to report on the results, but they are dedicated to competing at nationals.
