FAHS Science Olympiad Returns to States

Every year, the FAHS Science Olympiad team seems to succeed at the competitions. The team recently won 1^st place at the County level and 3^rd place at the Regional level, gaining them a place at states. Participants from Fleetwood won several medals at the latest competition, which was held at Kutztown University on March 9^th, 2011.

Senior Mary Fullington and sophomore Aaron Nelson won first place in the Anatomy event.

“Regionals was awesome, and I am so pumped for states,” said Nelson.

In Dynamic Planets, Patrick Tobias, and Brad Pafchek received first place for the event. Dan Zebrine, Matt Barletta, and Noah Moore obtained second place for Experimental Design.

Said Tobias, “I thought we could have done better at Regionals, and we could make up for it at states.”

With a first place, Dan Zebrine and Matt Barletta won the Forensics event.  Meghana Patil and Mary Fullington achieved second place in Microbe Mission. In Ornithology, Elizabeth Ickes and Eric Houghton attained fourth place. Jes Russo, Mary Fullington, and Meghana Patil won third place in Protein Modeling. Greg Ratzell received first in Towers, and Noah Moore with Eric Houghton obtained fourth place in Wind Power.

Overall, the students from Fleetwood High did a fantastic job at the competition for the Central Eastern Region.

Said Houghton, “I’m very happy with making it to states. Our team put a lot of time into it, and it paid off. I am a little disappointed in our third place finish at regionals, but hopefully we can redeem ourselves a bit when we compete at states. For the two events I won medals in, they came as a bit of a surprise, but we put a good amount of studying into them. I am really glad that it paid off.”

This year, the state competition will be held on April 29^th at Juniata College. Fleetwood will be competing against 35 schools from all over the state in approximately 23 events. The goal for states is to finish in the top ten.

Science teacher and coach Todd Driesbach said, “This year’s team had an experienced senior group with very strong underclassmen classes, and this helped balance out the team.”