Diamond Bar High School’s Science Olympiad team started off the year strong at the Science Olympiad National Invitational on Jan. 8, placing 18 out of 246 teams. 

This year’s competition was held virtually, with an online testing system and zoom meetings having been set in place for events that required it. Due to this format, members faced some technical difficulties, causing them to feel that they did not perform their best.

“There were a couple issues though with getting spaces to run [building] events and the online test platform crashing, but everything ultimately was resolved,” co-captain, senior Eileen Zu said via Instagram. 

One event in particular that the members noted having to face obstacles, due to technical issues that came with the specific part of the competition, was the Engineering category’s Trajectory event. In this section of the competition, sophomore Dora Huang was tasked with assembling a ping-pong catapult. Due to scheduling conflicts, her partner ended up being late to the event, leaving the duo with a disadvantage.

“I started the Zoom call so we [didn’t] get disqualified, and solo-ed most of the event which wasn’t ideal, as it took more time to adjust the catapult without a partner,” Huang said via Discord. 

Regardless of Huang running the majority of the event on her own, the duo still placed 24th.

Despite the issues in the previous events, Huang also participated in Experimental Design with teammates, sophomore Mia Zhang and freshman Audrey Tjandra. The event focused on creating an experiment with controlled conditions to analyze a certain phenomenon.

“It went fairly smoothly, and we had a couple minutes to spare and check our work,” Huang said. “It was a bit of reassurance, as running out of time is a worry.”

With the extra time coming in handy, the unit was ranked 16th.

Hoping to uphold their strong performance, the team looks forward to their future competitions.

“My hope for this year’s team is to win regionals, and hopefully do well at state,” junior Jeffrey Gong said via Instagram. “We have a strong team this year and hopefully we can do well.”

Overall, the team placed no lower than 25th place for all their events at the SONI competition, which qualifies to earn either a trophy or medal.

“I’m grateful to and proud of our team,” sophomore Emily Ren said. “We spend many hours in group study meetings on Saturdays, as well as during winter break and our free time, studying for our events. It’s greatly rewarding to see how our hard work pays off.”